Part2

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 1

SCIENCE AND CULTURE MAURIZIO IACCARINO

Modern Science had its beginnings in the 17th century in Europe with the natural philosophy of Galileo and Newton. Different factors contributed to its flourishing. Among them: (i) a process that led to the independence of scientific theories from myths, religion and theology; (ii) the interaction among the different European cultures, that stimulated creativity through new ways of thinking and new paradigms for the observation of Nature; (iii) the foundation of the scientific academies, notably the Accademia dei Lincei, the Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences, which contributed to scientific progress through the dissemination of new knowledge. Science aims at a description of causes and effects of the events occurring in Nature and it is based on the philosophy common to the European cultures, deeply influenced by Aristotle and Plato. According to them our understanding of the natural world is based on a set of a priori beliefs that cannot be subject to scientific enquiry, namely on ideal objects, or universal values, allowing us to imagine and describe the world around us. Religious people believe that God dictates the universal values; while agnostic or atheistic people believe that universal values are inherent in the Human Reason [3]. Transcendental values are the source of human beliefs that guide humanity to social and ethical rules and to the observation of Nature. Thus, belief in God or in the Human Reason is the essential prerequisite for scientists to be able to describe the outside world [8]. In other words, science is deeply rooted in metaphysics and there is no conflict between Religion and Science. Moreover, although the language of Science is often specialized and thus inaccessible to non-specialists, Science and Culture are not different entities: Science is part of Culture. Science has had a strong influence on European culture. In the 19th century the key word for Science was order. Scientists had found that the

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

2

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 2

MAURIZIO IACCARINO

movement of stars is highly predictable: all terrestrial and celestial phenomena follow the same scientific laws and the Universe is like a clock. They believed, according to the Galileian vision, that the book of Nature was written in the language of mathematics with characters represented by geometric objects, like triangles or circles. They affirmed that the mission of science was to discover the laws of Nature and that all natural phenomena could be explained with scientific laws. This faith in science gave rise to the philosophical movement called Positivism, which contributed to a diffused trust in Science and Technology and influenced social theories. Even after the fading out of Positivism the Darwinian theory of evolution influenced social phenomena like eugenics and racism. The faith in the possibilities offered by scientific progress still shapes the beliefs and actions of many people. In fact, expressions like ‘this has been scientifically demonstrated’, are often used to cut short a discussion. Science shapes the personality of those that deal with it. In fact the work of scientists implies the proposition of new and original ways of interpreting the accepted explanations of facts. Originality, independence and dissent are characteristic of the scientific culture. However, originality means independence of thought and therefore a challenge of the established cultural values. Therefore, scientific progress requires encouragement and protection of cultural independence. The safeguards that independence requires are free inquiry, free thought, free speech, tolerance, and the willingness to arbitrate disputes on the basis of evidence. These values are of course important also in other domains of social life. Thus, science promotes values that yield a more tolerant society, able to adapt to changes and to novelties. Science and Technology are interrelated and reinforce each other. Science and the use of scientific knowledge have profoundly changed everyday life, mainly in developed countries. Life expectancy has increased strikingly and cures have been discovered for many diseases; agricultural productivity has until now matched the demographic increase; and technological developments and the use of new energy sources have created the opportunity of freeing humankind from arduous labour. Technologies based on new methods of communication, information handling and computation have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges [2, 4]. Figure 1 shows some of the discoveries or inventions that in the 20th century have radically changed our way of describing the natural world, or have influenced our everyday life. Today, science and scientific applications exert a profound influence on the cul-

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 3

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

3

tural values of society and even the organization of society itself owes much to scientific thinking [9]. Much of this progress took place in Europe and in North America and, if we take the award of the Nobel prizes for science as an indicator of scientific excellence, we can see from Figure 2 that more than 90% of the laureates in the natural sciences come from Western Europe and North America, even though these countries include only 10% of the world population. Figure 3 shows that three quarters of the world scientific publications come from Western Europe and North America. The low number of Nobel laureates from the rest of the world reflects differences in culture and in the type of education, as well as in the level of financial support to scientific research. Even within a single country there are sectors of the population that do not contribute to Science because of lack of education. Fig. 4 reports a statement made in 1913 by the Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The cultural attitude at the turn of the 20th century in the USA deprived black people of an appropriate education and as a consequence made them less interested in pursuing a career in Science. The governments of developed countries consider Science and Technology essential for economic progress and military power and therefore allocate abundant financial resources to science education and to public scientific research. In turn, a stimulating cultural environment, partially due to the high level of scientific education, attracts investments in private scientific research, thus adding to public commitment. The governments of newly industrialized countries have recently realized that the competitiveness of their industrial products needs scientific education and scientific research and therefore have increased the financial resources in this field. In developing countries public opinion realizes the importance of scientific research and stimulates the governments to increase the resources for science, although budget restrictions are often prohibitive. In all countries the use of new technological products stimulates the curiosity of people not only for technology, but also for science. It is therefore fair to state that in the last few centuries Science has had a strong influence on cultural values all over the world. This is not always positive. In developing countries science education based on Western concepts and culture, and taught by teachers for whom Science is often unrelated to their culture, leads children to deny the validity and authority of the knowledge transmitted to them by their parents and grandparents. Moreover, the widespread interest in new technologies causes an

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

4

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 4

MAURIZIO IACCARINO

increased interest in foreign civilizations and cultures, not always accompanied by an appropriate elaboration harmonising it with the local culture. This creates tension in several societies. The birth of modern Science is built on the past. Islamic civilization had a strong influence on the foundation of modern Science in Europe. The Muslims were the leading scholars in Science between the 7th and the 15th centuries. They were the heirs of the scientific traditions of Greece, India and Persia and, after appropriation and assimilation, they built on them and developed a truly Islamic science that was leading in all fields of science and technology, including medicine. These activities were truly cosmopolitan, in that the participants were Arabs, Persians, Central Asians, later on also Indians and Turks. They were mainly Muslims, but also Christians and Jews. The transfer of the knowledge of Islamic science to the West through various channels paved the way to the Renaissance and to the Scientific Revolution in Europe. The general public in the West is unaware of the important contributions of Islamic civilization to modern Science and to Middle Age culture. When I was Assistant Director General of UNESCO I promoted the organization of an Exhibition on Science, Technology and Medicine in Islam. Its purpose is to bridge this gap in knowledge and to present in an effective and visual manner the major achievements of Islamic civilization. The Exhibition aims at illustrating the outstanding achievements of Islamic scientists and craftsmen, and the extent of their contribution to the general progress of science and technology. It will show Islamic civilization as an important link in the general cultural and scientific history of mankind, and the strong bonds between Islamic civilization and the later civilization of the West. Because of the unresolved political problems confronting the Middle East, the Western world has always been given a distorted picture of Islam and of the Arabs. The exhibition will remind people that Islamic science is part of our own heritage, and that the great Islamic scientists whose works were translated into Latin, like Jabir ibn Hayan (Geber), ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Razi (Rhazes), ibn al-Haytham (Adhazin) and al-Khuwarizmi, are as important as any other great later European scientist. The following Figures (5, 6, 7 and 8, see pages 378-381) illustrate some of the objects that will appear in the exhibition. What do we mean by Science? The scientific approach to the understanding of nature aims at analysing each phenomenon according to a predetermined set of rules that have a more general validity. Scientific work may be a description, like in the case of cosmology, or palaeontology or

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 5

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

5

anatomy. These descriptions may lead to the formulation of theories, or paradigms according to Kuhn [1], that provide an interpretation of the causes and effects of the described events and that can be tested through experiments. When these experiments prove that the theory is wrong new hypotheses are made and tested. To quote Bertold Brecht in his play about Galileo: ‘the aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to put a limit to infinite error’. Another characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it builds on the past, namely it is incremental. The aim of a scientific discipline is to describe a specific field according to a subset of rules: for example, biology to be described at the anatomical, histological, cellular or biochemical level. This means that each type of description may become more and more complete with time. Does it come to an end, as Gunther Stent stated in 1968 [7] in the case of molecular biology? Gunther Stent started his scientific career when many people believed, in the framework of vitalistic theories, that it was not possible to interpret the inheritance of genetic traits in chemical terms. The elucidation of the genetic code was a victory for him, but at the same time the end of a challenge. Stent’s statement upset many scientists of the time who believed that molecular biology was still alive. Later on we have witnessed an enormous amount of new discoveries and new knowledge in this field. However, it is true that, after 1968, work on the elucidation of the genetic code consisted only in finding out about details. I believe that specific types of scientific description approach an end, like in the case of anatomy, which was actively studied many years ago, while today this knowledge is mostly obtained through textbooks. Scientists have been very successful when studying specific aspects of the natural world that were amenable to observation and experimentation, because the necessary theoretical and technical tools were available: this is the case of microbiology and the discovery of the causative agents of infectious diseases at the end of the 19th century; or the discovery of vitamins in the first decades of the 20th century. Scientists work on simple systems, which are usually idealizations or primitive models of a real situation. In this way scientists ignore many facts that occur during their experimentation. They also work at a specific level of analysis: for example the physics of elementary particles does not contribute to the interpretation of the mechanism of muscle contraction. To use the words of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: In my quest for the secret of life I started my research in histology. Unsatisfied by the information that cellular morphology could

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

6

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 6

MAURIZIO IACCARINO

give me about life, I turned to physiology. Finding physiology too complex, I took up pharmacology. Still finding the situation too complicated, I turned to bacteriology. But bacteria were even too complex, so I descended to the molecular level, studying chemistry and physical chemistry. After twenty years’ work, I was led to conclude that to understand life we have to descend to the electronic level and to the world of wave mechanics. But electrons are just electrons and have no life at all. Evidently on the way I lost life; it had run out between my fingers. Science today is confronted with the difficulty of integrating results and concepts coming from different approaches and levels of analysis. Sometimes the experimental observations are so numerous that they cannot be analysed within a simple model. The reductionistic approach of most scientists is to ignore a set of facts considered to be irrelevant and to propose a model that is based on what they consider to be the key observations. This approach is certainly useful when the model can be experimentally tested. Otherwise, new ways of approaching the study of complexity are needed today. It has been proposed that a network of objects has emergent properties that cannot be explained through the study of the single components. For example the Internet requires single users, but it is made up by connections. Biological phenomena are studied at different levels of organization and the theories formulated at each level can explain only a set of facts. When proceeding from a simple level towards a more complex one, new behaviours emerge. In other words, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, or different from the sum of the parts. For example, the properties of a protein are different from the sum of the properties of each amino acid that composes it. The properties of biological structures made of macromolecules interacting through non-covalent bonds are different from the sum of the properties of each macromolecule. Therefore, the understanding of a biological phenomenon does not necessarily require knowledge of the smallest details. The study of complex systems is a major challenge for the future and may require a different approach to the study of the world around us. In this endeavour we might find it useful to compare Western Science with Traditional Knowledge. The observations of Nature that are not part of Western Science are generally defined as Indigenous or Traditional Knowledge. While Western Science favours reductionism and mechanicistic and quantitative approaches, Traditional Knowledge emphasizes the observation of natural phenomena from a global point of view. These observations are strict-

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 7

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

7

ly linked to the local culture and to the predominant philosophy. In precolonial times in Africa there were specialists that knew well the characteristics of climate and soil, and were able to give expert advice on where and when to grow crops. They had a precise knowledge of the tropical flora and of desert bushes and developed a sophisticated classification of plants in families and groups, based on their cultural and ritual properties. The medical theories of Nigerian Yorubas included the concept of invisible entities causing infectious diseases, analogous to the bacteria of Western medicine. Science and technology in Africa were quite advanced, compared to European levels, in the fields of human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, food conservation, fermentation, metallurgy and the preparation of soap and cosmetics [5]. After colonization the educational and political system introduced European values and consequently devalued traditional knowledge. Moreover, the importance of traditional knowledge in the countries where it has been produced is today diminished because of the success of modern science and technology and of the economic power that accompanies it. For these reasons the knowledge systems of other cultures concerning the observation of Nature are not well known in the Western world. Cultures from all regions of the world have developed a complex view of Nature, rooted in their philosophy, and leading to their understanding and explanation of the natural world. The traditional knowledge of nonEuropean cultures is the expression of specific ways of living in the world, of a specific relationship between society and culture, and of a specific approach to the acquisition and construction of knowledge. This knowledge provides much of the world’s population with the principal means by which they fulfil their basic needs. Although modern Science, with the ensuing technologies, has attained a particularly dominant position, other knowledge systems do exist and we should accept that Science is one knowledge system among many others [6]. Traditional Knowledge does not divide the observations into different disciplines to the same extent as Science, and this more synthetic and holistic approach may give indications to develop new paradigms for the observation and study of complex phenomena. Most of our observations of the natural world are empirical and scientists try to give a scientific explanation to only a part of them. Occasionally a new field of science, or a new discipline, is opened because of new tools permitting the observation of specific phenomena, but most of our observations of the natural world are empirical. The traditional knowledge of non-Western cultures puts empirical observations in a different philosoph-

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

8

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 8

MAURIZIO IACCARINO

ical context. Thus, in all cultures the attempt is to harmonize empirical observations into a context aiming at the description of Nature and to be able to interpret them through models that lead to predictions. Much of the empirical knowledge existing in the culture of Western countries is based on traditional beliefs and is called local or vernacular. It is not different from Traditional Knowledge, although this term is generally used for the knowledge of non-Western cultures. In conclusion, Western Science is deeply rooted in Western Culture and has a great influence not only in Europe and North America, but also all over the world. Science educates people to a rational and tolerant approach to everyday problems. On the other hand Science and the use of scientific knowledge causes social tensions of different types in different parts of the world. Western Science is a specific way of analysing Nature and the Traditional Knowledge of other cultures represents a different approach to the study of Nature.

REFERENCES [1]. Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago, 1970. [2]. Iaccarino, M., ‘A Vision for European Science’. EMBO Reports 2, pp. 259-262 (2001). [3]. Iaccarino, M., ‘Science and Ethics’. EMBO Reports 2, pp. 747-750 (2001). [4]. Iaccarino, M., Introduction to the Proceedings of the World Conference on Science. A.M. Cetto, ed. Banson, UK, 2000: http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/newsletter/proceedings.htm [5]. Mazrui, A.A., Ade Ajayi J.F., Tendances de la philosophie et de la science en Afrique. In: Histoire Générale de l’Afrique, Vol. VIII, A.A. Mazrui and C. Wondji, eds. UNESCO publishing, 1998. [6]. Nakashima, D., What relationship between scientific and traditional systems of knowledge? Some introductory remarks. In: Proceedings of the World Conference on Science. A.M. Cetto, ed. Banson, UK, 2000. [7]. Stent, G.S., ‘That was molecular biology that was’. Science, 160, pp. 390-395 (1968). [8]. Stent, G.S., ‘Molecular Biology and Metaphysics’. Nature, 248, pp. 779781 (1974). [9]. UNESCO/ICSU. Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge: http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/eng/declaration_e.htm

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 9

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 20th CENTURY

1900 1901 1903 1905 1922 1923 1928 1929 1932 1935 1942 1945 1947 1950 1953 1954 1957 1975 1980 1996

Fig. 1

Quantum theory (M. Planck) Transatlantic telegraph signal (G. Marconi) Airplane flight (Wright brothers) Theory of relativity (A. Einstein) Insulin discovered (F. Banting and C. Best) Television camera (V. Zworykin) Penicillin (A. Fleming) Theory of universe expansion (E. Hubble) Protons and neutrons in the atom (J. Chadwick) Nylon and plastics Controlled nuclear reaction (E. Fermi) Electronic computer Transistor (W. Shockley) Chemotherapy to treat leukemia (G. Elion) DNA tertiary structure (J. Watson and F. Crick) Kidney transplant (J.E. Murray) Sputnik satellite Monoclonal antibodies (C. Milstein) Software for the Internet (CERN, T. Bernes-Lee) Cloning of a sheep (I. Wilmut)

9

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

10

Pagina 10

MAURIZIO IACCARINO

NOBEL LAUREATES IN NATURAL SCIENCES, (1901-1998) BY GEOGRAPHICAL REGION

Region

Number of laureates

Percentage

Western Europe

230

50

North America

200

43

Eastern Europe

13

2.8

Asia

9

1.9

Australasia

4

0.8

Latin America

3

0.6

Africa

1

0.2

Arab Region

0

0

Fig. 2.

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 11

11

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS IN THE WORLD

1997 (%)

% change over 1990

Western Europe

37.5

110

North America

36.6

92

Industrial Asia

10.8

126

Former Soviet Union

3.7

51

Oceania

2.8

107

China

2.0

170

India

1.9

89

Latin America

1.8

136

S. & E. Mediterranean

1.9

120

Sub-Saharan Africa

0.7

72

Rest of Asia

0.5

98

Fig. 3. Source: OST, Paris: Indicateurs 2000.

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

‘There is not a single mulatto who has done creditable scientific work’

Fig. 4. From the speech entitled ‘Science, Education and Democracy’, delivered in 1913 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by the Vice-President, J. McKeen Cattell. Science, vol. 39, pp. 154-164 (1914).

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 12

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY IACCARINO

ZICHICHI: I’ve three remarks and a final comment. Remark number one: in your interesting list of achievements, one of the greatest conquests of the human intellect, the Dirac equation, is missing. The Dirac equation opened up a new field in our knowledge of nature. This field is our greatest contemporary activity, going on all over the world. I am referring to the existence of the virtual phenomena. Due to the fact that if the electron exists, Dirac discovered that the anti-electron must exist, thus opening up a new horizon. So you should add the Dirac equation to your list. You cite Einstein for relativity. The father of relativity is Galilei. If you read how he formulated relativity, he included what is called restricted relativity. Einstein is the father of his cosmological equation, not of relativity. Now, I would like to turn to science and culture. I wish you were right that science is part of our culture. It is not. Modern culture is based on language. Of the three greatest achievements of our intellect, language, logic and science, only one is in our so-called modern culture. Neither logic nor science belong to our present-day culture. So, I wish you were right, but you’re too optimistic. A final comment: you speak about elementary particles not being able to explain the contraction of muscles. This is presently going on in nanotechnology, and a contracting muscle has been reproduced at the nanotechnological level. If nanotechnology exists, this is because of us. No one could imagine the existence of nanotechnology before the discovery of atoms and molecules. So, it is my duty to state that in fact our field is the basis of the most advanced technological development. To conclude: you say that European science is built on Islamic science. I’ve a lot of friends in the Arab world, and they fully agree with me on the following statement: the father of science is Galilei. The proof is this: in four hundred years, we went from the world to the super-world. If Islamic science was real science, why did it take a thousand years to discover the first laws of nature, and why, for example, did it take thousands of years to

1.Iaccarino(TAVOLE)

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 13

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY IACCARINO

13

improve our knowledge of time? What you call Islamic science left us blocked on the meridian instead of switching to the pendulum. One thousand years is an immense amount of time. Galilei is the father of science because after Galilei everything exploded: so our science is not built on Islamic science, because it is Galilei, not the Islamic culture, who discovered the logic of nature. IACCARINO: Just a very brief counter comment. When I said science, or modern science, or European science, I meant science after Galileo. When I talked about other science, Islamic science, I meant a different knowledge system. GERMAIN: Dr. Iaccarino, do you imply that complexity cannot be approached through the scientific method? IACCARINO: I think nobody knows the answer. We all try to study complex systems with our present philosophical tools and we’re succeeding in doing quite a lot. We’ll see ten years from now, twenty years from now, if we succeed or not. MITTELSTRASS: A very short question: your result was that traditional culture represents an alternative approach to science as we know it. What kind of alternative? In terms of aims? In terms of means? In terms of explanations? Are they not on a very different level? IACCARINO: Maybe I said ‘alternative’, but now that I listen to you I would use a different term, a different knowledge system, but not alternative.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 14

QUE LA SCIENCE S’INSCRIT DANS LA CULTURE COMME “PRATIQUE THÉORIQUE” PAUL RICŒUR

La ligne générale de ma contribution est la suivante: si l’on veut s’interroger sur les “valeurs culturelles de la science”, selon le titre donné à la session plénière de notre Académie, il ne faut pas limiter la discussion à l’épistémologie des sciences prises une à une, ni même à un aperçu de leurs applications susceptibles de changer les comportements humains à court terme et leurs visions du monde à long terme. Il faut tenter d’appréhender dans l’unité de son projet l’aventure intellectuelle et spirituelle que constitue la science. Ainsi serait prise en compte la désignation au singulier de la science. L’épistémologie des sciences honore le pluriel et la pluralité des disciplines scientifiques en fonction de leur référent spécifique qui font de chacune la science de... Suivent les applications et leur impact bénéfique ou non. Le choix de mon titre exprime l’intention de mon intervention. Je laisse de côté pour l’instant la question que pose l’évocation de la culture comme un certain intégrateur de multiples facteurs sur des échelles de temps variant du court terme au moyen et long terme, intégrateur justifiable lui aussi de l’emploi du mot au singulier. S’il y a quelque sens à tenter d’appréhender la science comme un unique projet insistant et cohérent, présidant à une aventure intellectuelle et spirituelle à laquelle chacune des sciences prises une à une se reconnaît participer, et qui les autorise tacitement à se revendiquer comme science, – quel nom donner à l’approche en question? Je propose celui de “pratique théorique”, dans l’idée que c’est à ce titre que la science au singulier s’inscrit dans la culture, en tant qu’intégrale d’autres pratiques qui ne se caractérisent pas comme théoriques. Désignons dès maintenant deux des plus remarquables pratiques non théoriques: les techniques et la politique.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 15

QUE LA SCIENCE S’INSCRIT DANS LA CULTURE COMME “PRATIQUE THÉORIQUE”

15

I. Le projet instaurateur de la science Je veux justifier le choix de l’expression pratique théorique contre l’objection préalable qu’elle produit un brouillage au niveau d’un départage qui paraît acquis entre le théorique et le pratique. Cette séparation ne date pas de Kant et de la distinction entre les deux Critiques, celle de la raison théorique et celle de la raison pratique, elle remonte même au-delà de la distinction médiévale entre les grands “transcendantaux”: du vrai, du bien (ou du juste), et du beau; elle remonte aux Grecs soucieux de mettre la theoria à distance des techniques et même du politique en tant que “genre de vie”. Si je prends le risque de cette contestation préalable, c’est afin de faire apparaître sous le nom de pratique théorique une dimension du phénomène scientifique qui ne réduit pas aux procédures véritatives spécifiques à chaque science, concernant la formation des hypothèses, leur vérification par l’observation ou l’expérimentation et, entre hypothèse et vérification/falsification, le recours à la modélisation comme expression de l’imaginaire scientifique. À l’arrière de ces procédures véritatives, il y a un acte fondateur, instaurateur, qui est le projet même de l’epistémé comme forme de vérité. Cet acte a trouvé dans la mathématique grecque, dans sa géométrie, sa théorie des proportions, son critère du nombre et de la mesure, son identification comme fondation et instauration d’un projet qui a distingué pour toujours la culture occidentale de toute autre culture. Arrêtons-nous sur cette idée de projet de l’epistémé: il définit la théorie comme pratique. En effet, ce projet, en tant qu’instauration, n’est pas transparent à lui-même, alors qu’il ne peut être compris que de l’intérieur à lui-même. Il ne peut réapproprier ce que Jean Ladrière appelle “sa propre vertu auto-posante”, au niveau du principe de son instauration, qu’à travers des aspects très singuliers de son historicité; si son avènement peut prétendre à un statut supra-historique, cet avènement ne se laisse appréhender qu’à travers ce qu’on peut appeler des “événements de pensée”, avec leur côté aléatoire, improbable, non déductible d’une situation historique donnée, même si après coup on peut trouver une explication à l’événement et à son surgissement en tel lieu, la Sicile et Athènes et en tel temps, le cinquième siècle avant notre ère. En liant son sort à la mathématique, la pensée grecque dans la personne de ses sophoi, a fait un choix qui la dépasse et qui engage l’avenir entier du savoir occidental. Une chaîne d’événements de pensée, tous aléatoires, et tous nécessaires après coup, ont transformé le projet en destin. Il appartient à l’idée d’événement de pensée de créer de l’irréversible. Après, on ne pense pas comme avant.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

16

14:56

Pagina 16

PAUL RICŒUR

Le projet en tant qu’instaurateur n’est pas, ai-je dit, transparent à luimême: mais il n’est pas non plus inintelligible. S’il n’est pas réductible au premier de ces événements de pensée, le projet se reconnaît à mesure, dans la capacité des événements de pensée ultérieurs de faire suite avec les premiers. Les exemples ne manquent pas de cet aléatoire consolidé. Citons le principe d’inertie, qui a révolutionné la théorie du mouvement et achevé le démantèlement de la physique aristotélicienne en tant que rationalisation de l’expérience perceptive en écho et en convergence avec une théorie de l’âme. Avec le modèle galiléen, la nature ne sera plus considérée que selon le nombre, la figure et le mouvement: l’héliocentrisme, qui aurait dû n’être qu’une péripétie après Copernic et Tycho-Brahé, a pris figure de révolution culturelle avec Galilée parce que le savoir scientifique s’est heurté à une vision du monde issue d’une autre région de la culture de l’époque. Cette crise est d’autant plus absurde que la symbolique de la lumière avait dès toujours placé la terre, l’humus de l’Adam, le terreux, en bas, et la source de lumière en haut. C’est là un exemple des interférences et des empiètements dont l’epistémé a été victime de la part d’autres grandeurs et puissances culturelles. Continuant cette évocation d’exemples qu’on rattache à la révolution scientifique de l’âge classique, on aurait davantage de raison d’attacher de l’importance au passage du monde fini au monde infini, que commentait Koyré, et qui avait trouvé dans la méditation pascalienne sur l’égarement de l’homme en un lieu en apparence quelconque de l’univers, et dans l’intervalle étroit de deux infinis. Je n’irai pas au-delà de la grande synthèse cosmologique de l’ère newtonienne, qui restera le grand référent culturel jusqu’aux événements de pensée auxquels nous devons la physique quantique, la microphysique et une nouvelle conception des relations interstellaires. Mais il ne faut refuser le titre d’événement de pensée à la découverte de la circulation sanguine, puis à celle de la respiration par combustion de l’oxygène. De véritables conflits au niveau culturel ont procédé des événements de pensée liés aux sciences de la vie et attachés au titre emblématique de l’évolution des espèces. Avec l’extension des modèles explicatifs relevant des sciences de la nature aux sciences de l’homme, les entrecroisements se sont produits entre des positions se réclamant du projet épistémique et les requêtes ressortissant aux autres compartiments de la culture commune, à savoir, pour faire bref, la dimension éthico-juridico-politique de la pratique humaine. J’y reviendrai plus loin. Mais je ne veux pas abandonner l’idée de projet épistémique – et les difficultés conceptuelles attachées aux idées d’instauration, d’avènement-événement, d’événements de pensée, de nécessité après coup de l’enchaînement

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 17

QUE LA SCIENCE S’INSCRIT DANS LA CULTURE COMME “PRATIQUE THÉORIQUE”

17

des événements fondateurs, – sans avoir insisté sur le mélange de l’aléatoire et du nécessaire qui caractérise le projet instaurataur; la réflexion est ici confrontée à une “démarche qui trace son chemin au fur et à mesure qu’elle s’y avance” (Ladrière). Car le chemin n’est pas tracé d’avance; le projet n’est pas un schéma que l’on peut tenir devant soi comme l’image de ce qui est à réaliser. “Il se propose dans l’agir même qui le promeut” (ibid.). Nous avons là un cas inédit d’intrication du fondamental et de l’historique, dont d’autres pratiques humaines, disons le technique et le politique, abondent en exemples, mais sans peut-être porter cette marque d’insistance et de persévérance propre au projet instaurateur de scientificité. Pour nous, au début du XXIème siècle, l’instauration du projet de la science apparaît comme un événement qui a déjà eu lieu, qui s’enveloppe dans les grands discours des inventeurs. On reprend conscience de son caractère aléatoire lorsque l’on est confronté à la question du futur de la science. À la question: où va la science? il n’y a pas à vrai dire de réponse, s’il est vrai qu’elle trouve son chemin en le parcourant et en accumulant les traces de son avancée. Aléatoire reste le grand dessein quant à son avenir. Ce côté aléatoire d’un projet dont l’instauration est pourtant irrécusable se vérifie dans la pratique quotidienne de l’activité scientifique; on a tendance à dissocier l’histoire des inventions de l’enseignement de l’épistémologie et à exiler cette histoire dans la psychologie et la biographie ou à la noyer dans l’histoire des idées: on élimine ainsi le caractère énigmatique de l’avancée des sciences joignant, comme on l’a suggéré, le fondamental et l’historique; ce lien secret empêche l’histoire des sciences de virer à l’anecdotique. Il en va de même des querelles d’écoles, de luttes de pouvoir, de la course aux subventions publiques, au mécénat privé, aux contrats avec l’industrie. Tout cela fait partie de ce que Ladrière, déjà cité, appelle l’historicité instauratrice, dans laquelle se résume le régime intellectuel et spirituel de l’aventure scientifique. Le scientifique fait front à l’absence de transparence du projet instaurateur en le vivant quotidiennement comme une tâche, une injonction dont le sens se découvre en lui obéissant, de la même façon que le chemin se découvre en le traçant. II. La pratique théorique et les autres pratiques Cela dit, je voudrais esquisser ce que dans mon titre j’appelle l’inscription de la science dans la culture. Cette inscription consiste dans les interférences entre la pratique théorique et les autres pratiques. J’en ai nommé deux en passant, les techniques et la politique. Il n’est pas sûr

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

18

14:56

Pagina 18

PAUL RICŒUR

qu’elles puissent être caractérisées comme la science par un projet instaurateur, cette notion ne paraissant pouvoir s’appliquer qu’à l’epistémé comme projet de vérité. Quoi qu’il en soit de cette question et de ce parallélisme au niveau du projet instaurateur, il n’est pas douteux que les pratiques susceptibles d’être définies comme des techniques ont une histoire distincte de celle des sciences, même si aujourd’hui elles leur sont subordonnées à titre d’applications et aussi en raison de leur incorporation aux procédures de vérification des hypothèses scientifiques exigeant un appareillage technique de haut niveau. Il reste que la technique est née de gestes qu’on peut dire eux aussi fondateurs, tels que: capter le feu, tailler le silex, produire et conserver l’outil, inventer la roue, suppléer l’énergie corporelle par le dressage des animaux de charge, inventer la mécanique des machines, passer de la vapeur à l’électricité, et, depuis quelques décennies, substituer le calcul aux énergies relayant le muscle. C’est une question discutée par certains philosophes de savoir si l’on peut parler d’un dessein dissimulé d’ “arraisonnement” du monde de la vie par ce qu’on appelle la Technique, le singulier du terme singeant celui du projet instaurateur de la Science. Avouant mon incompétence sur ce sujet, je préfère diriger notre projecteur sur les conduites humaines placées depuis Socrate sous le signe de l’idée de justice. Cette idée normative embrasse les conduites privées et publiques auxquelles on a donné le nom de “mœurs”(ëthë), qui a donné le mot “éthique”, dont la justice est un des fleurons. Dans son noyau premier, l’éthique est à la fois une province du politique concernant la pluralité humaine, et l’enveloppe commune de la morale privée et de la morale publique. C’est pourquoi j’ai gardé plus haut comme terme emblématique de cette pratique, distincte et de l’epistëmë et de la techne, le politique. J’aimerais citer à cet égard un mot d’Aristote au début de l’Éthique à Nicomaque: si l’on admet que toute activité, toute production, poursuit une fin, et si l’on trouve pour chaque métier une excellence qui en désigne l’exercice accompli, y a-t-il pour l’homme en tant que tel, – non pas le musicien, le pilote, mais l’homme tout court – une fonction, une tâche à remplir, qui permettrait de discerner les signes d’une vie accomplie? C’est cette question qui spécifie cette pratique relative aux mœurs, laquelle se ramifie en éthique et politique, à quoi s’ajoute le droit comme discipline distincte, et de l’éthique et de la politique. Mais le faisceau des pratiques relatives aux mœurs garde une consistance propre dans le tableau de la pluralité des pratiques: pratique théorique, technique, morale (au sens large des “mœurs”). L’idée de justice en constitue l’emblème par excellence.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 19

QUE LA SCIENCE S’INSCRIT DANS LA CULTURE COMME “PRATIQUE THÉORIQUE”

19

Pourquoi me suis-je étendu sur cette question des mœurs et de la justice? Ce n’est pas seulement pour souligner la pluralité des pratiques et faire leur place aux pratiques non théoriques, mais pour préparer la discussion portant sur les interférences, chevauchements et conflits de frontières et de compétence mettant en question le statut de l’homme. Il est en effet le seul être qui relève de plusieurs, sinon de toutes, les pratiques: théorique, technique, morale, juridique et politique. Il est l’être du carrefour des pratiques. III. Le savoir sur l’homme Il n’y a pas eu de problème majeur tant qu’une frontière n’a pas été tracée entre une nature comprise comme animée et voisine de l’âme, et une âme elle-même empreinte de naturalité: c’est l’époque de la physique aristotélicienne et des éthiques naturelles. Cette frontière a été tracée à la fin de la Renaissance. Une certaine continuité entre la connaissance de la nature et celle de l’homme se trouve encore préservée dans la tradition du “droit naturel” au prix d’une redéfinition de la nature s’agissant de l’homme: c’est une nature qui comporte une qualitas moralis, pour emprunter le terme à Grotius dans De jure belli ac pacis: le sujet du droit resté inscrit dans la nature par le truchement de cette “qualité morale” (“attachée à la personne en vertu de quoi on peut légitimement avoir ou faire certaines choses”, ibid. I, 1, 4). Le problème est devenu aigu dès lors que la nature est devenue l’objet d’une science fondée sur la seule observation et le calcul mathématique. C’est le sens de la révolution galiléenne et newtonienne: l’esprit humain reconnaît n’avoir pas accès au principe de la production de la nature par elle-même ou par un autre qu’elle-même. Il ne peut que recueillir les données naturelles et entreprendre de “sauver les phénomènes”. Ce n’est pas rien, tant est illimité le champ de l’observable et puissante la capacité de former des hypothèses, d’étendre et de remplacer les modèles, de varier la modélisation, d’inventer des procédures de vérification/falsification. Avec les phénomènes relatifs à l’homme, cet ascétisme de l’hypothèse, de la modélisation et de l’expérimentation est compensé par le fait que nous avons un accès partiel à la production de certains phénomènes observables, par la réflexion, portant sur ce que dans les pratiques autres que la pratique théorique, les techniques, les mœurs, on désigne du terme générique d’action. Dans le vaste champ d’activité des “mœurs”, l’homme se tient pour responsable de son action. Cela signifie qu’il peut remonter des effets observables de ses actions (et de ses passions) à l’intention qui leur donne sens

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

20

14:56

Pagina 20

PAUL RICŒUR

et parfois aux actes spirituels créateurs de sens qui engendrent les intentions et leurs résultats observables. Ainsi l’action n’est pas donnée simplement à voir, comme tous les phénomènes de cette nature dont elle fait partie, elle est donnée à comprendre à partir des expressions qui sont à la fois les effets et les signes des intentions qui leur donnent sens et des actes créateurs de sens qui parfois les produisent. Il en résulte que la connaissance de l’homme ne se joue pas sur un seul plan, celui de l’observation et de l’explication; elle se déploie à l’interface de l’observation naturelle et de la compréhension réflexive. L’homme est à la fois un être observable, comme tout être de la nature dont il est une partie, et un être qui s’interprète lui-même (Self-interpreting being, pour parler comme Charles Taylor). Cette affirmation d’un dualisme non plus ontologique, comme à l’époque des discussions portant sur l’union et de l’âme et du corps, mais épistémique, pourrait offrir une réponse de conciliation et de pacification à la question posée par le statut de l’homme dans le champ du savoir, si l’idéologie positiviste ne prétendait abolir la frontière entre les sciences de la nature et les sciences de l’homme et annexer les secondes aux premières. La philosophie, malheureusement, a répondu à ce défi par la simple juxtaposition d’une phénoménologie de l’homme incarné, sans souci d’articuler son discours sur le mode d’être au monde de cet être agissant et souffrant avec le discours scientifique. Deux lieux conflictuels sont à cet égard à considérer en vue d’une vraie confrontation entre l’approche objective – naturaliste et l’approche réflexive: le domaine des sciences neuronales et celui des mutations génétiques et des sciences de l’hérédité issues de la théorie évolutionniste. Je me bornerai à esquisser dans les deux cas les conditions d’une articulation raisonnée des deux discours sur l’homme. Au plan des sciences neuronales, il est attendu du scientifique qu’il cherche au niveau cortical la corrélation entre des structures observables et des fonctions dont les structures sont la base, le support, ou comme on voudra dire. Le scientifique n’observe que des changements quantitatifs et qualitatifs, des hiérarchies toujours plus complexes de phénomènes observables; mais le sens de la fonction correspondant à la structure n’est compris que par le sujet parlant qui dit qu’il perçoit, qu’il imagine, qu’il se souvient. Ces déclarations verbales, jointes à des signes de comportement que l’homme partage pour une grande part avec les animaux supérieurs, viennent s’inscrire dans un type de discours où on ne parle pas de neurones, de synapses, etc... mais d’impressions, d’intentions, de dispositions, de désirs, d’idées, etc... À l’ancien dualisme ontologique des sub-

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 21

QUE LA SCIENCE S’INSCRIT DANS LA CULTURE COMME “PRATIQUE THÉORIQUE”

21

stances s’est substitué un dualisme des discours, un dualisme sémantique, si l’on peut dire, qui ne préjuge pas de la nature absolue de l’êtrehomme. Un corollaire intéressant de ce dualisme sémantique consiste en ceci qu’il est parlé différemment du corps, du même corps dans ces deux discours: il y a le corps objet dont le cerveau est la partie directrice avec sa merveilleuse architecture et le corps propre, ce corps qui est le seul à être mon corps, qui m’appartient, que je meus, que je souffre; et il y a mes organes, mes yeux “avec” quoi je vois, mes mains “avec” quoi je prends. Et c’est sur ce corps propre que s’édifie toute l’architecture de mes pouvoirs et de mes non-pouvoirs: pouvoir dire, agir, raconter, s’imputer à soimême ses propres actions comme en étant le véritable auteur. Se pose alors la question du rapport entre les deux discours, celui du neurologue et celui du phénomènologue. Et c’est ici que les discours se croisent sans jamais se dissoudre l’un dans l’autre. Le savant et le philosophe peuvent se mettre d’accord pour appeler le corps objet (et sa merveille, le cerveau), le “cela sans quoi nous ne penserions pas”. Le scientifique peut continuer à professer un matérialisme de méthode, qui lui permet de travailler sans scrupule métaphysique: le philosophe parlera alors du cerveau en termes de condition d’exercice, de support, de substrat, de base; mais ce sont des mots “cache-misère”. Il faut l’avouer, nous n’avons pas de troisième discours où nous saurions de quelque manière ce corps-cerveau et mon corps vif sont un seul et même être. Nous vérifions ici que nous n’avons pas d’accès à l’origine radicale de l’être que nous sommes. Faute de ce discours de l’origine, scientifiques et philosophes se borneront à chercher un ajustement toujours plus serré entre une science neuronale toujours plus experte en architecture matérielle et des descriptions phénoménologiques toujours plus près du vécu authentique. C’est dans le même esprit que peuvent être traités les malentendus issus de l’extension à l’homme des théories évolutionnistes. D’un côté, aucune limite externe ne peut être imposée à l’hypothèse selon laquelle des variations aléatoires, des mutations, auraient été fixées, renforcées, en raison de leur aptitude à assurer la survie des espèces, dont la nôtre. La philosophie – et pas seulement elle, mais les sciences sociales soucieuses de se démarquer de la biologie – ne se livreront pas à un combat perdu d’avance concernant les faits les mieux établis. Le philosophe se demandera comment il peut venir à la rencontre du point de vue naturaliste à partir d’une position où l’homme est déjà un être parlant et surtout un être questionnant concernant l’établissement de normes morales, sociales, juridiques, politiques. Alors que le scientifique suit l’ordre descendant des

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

22

14:56

Pagina 22

PAUL RICŒUR

espèces et fait apparaître l’aspect contingent, aléatoire, improbable, de ce résultat que nous sommes de l’évolution, le philosophe-herméneute partira de l’auto-interprétation de sa situation intellectuelle, morale et spirituelle et remontera le cours de l’évolution à la rencontre des sources de la vie. Son point de départ avoué c’est la question morale elle même, donnée déjà là, surgissant dans une sorte d’auto-référentialité de principe. Une liberté unie à une norme, c’est ce que Kant appelait autonomie. L’autonomie une fois posée, auto-posée, il devient légitime de se demander comment elle a été préparée dans la nature animale. Le regard est alors rétrospectif, remontant la chaîne des mutations et des variations. Et ce regard croise le regard progressif, descendant le fleuve de la “descendance” de l’homme. Les deux regards se croisent en un point: la naissance d’un ordre symbolique dont les normes configurent l’humanité de l’homme. La confusion à éviter est alors entre deux sens du mot origine, au sens de dérivation génétique et au sens de fondation normative. Là, comme dans le cas des sciences neuronales, la question restée ouverte est celle de l’articulation entre l’approche objective, naturaliste, et l’approche réflexive, herméneutique. Mais dans les deux cas, et d’autres semblables, l’approche scientifique n’obéit qu’à l’injonction évoquée plus haut, par laquelle l’esprit de recherche se reconnaît guidé par le projet instaurateur de l’epistémé. Seul son rapport aux autres pratiques peut ouvrir devant lui un espace de perplexité.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 23

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

ARBER: Merci beaucoup pour ces réflexions profondes qui vont nous servir certainement les prochains jours pour placer nos idées et réfléchir là-dessus ensemble. Mais je prends cette occasion déjà maintenant pour ouvrir une discussion d’abord au sujet de ce que nous venons d’entendre et puis si le temps nous le permet avant le déjeuner, peut-être pour y apporter encore quelques idées complémentaires. Je vois déjà Monsieur Singer, et puis Zichichi, Berti, dans cet ordre. SINGER: Professeur Ricœur, merci beaucoup pour ces pensées très claires. Je vois un problème. Vous avez bien délimité les deux approches épistémiques de la perspective de la première personne qui est notre introspection, la source de connaissance dans les sciences humaines surtout, et l’approche de la troisième personne. Maybe I’ll speak English, it’s easier for me in science, and the third person perspective, which is the perspective of the natural sciences. Now, I can see very well that these two ways of describing reality can coexist peacefully for a while, but what are we going to do if – as it seems to occur at the moment – the third person perspective approach provides evidence that is in contradiction with the first person perspective? What are we going to do if, as it seems to happen at the moment, the evidence that is brought forth by the natural sciences, in particular neurobiology, contradicts in a flagrant way the evidence that we take from the first person perspective? Take the phenomenon of free will for example, where we have an irreconcilable contradiction between what neurobiology tells us and what we feel and what we think we know about ourselves. The same is true for the organisation of our brains. We feel very differently about the conditions of our neuronal substrates than what neurobiology tells us. And what are we going to do in such a situation where the two parallel systems are no longer compatible? How can we get around this problem? You didn’t answer this question, I think.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

24

14:56

Pagina 24

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

RICŒUR: Yes: the logical gap between the assertion of free will and the logic of the creation of nature. Here I feel very close to Kant’s cosmological antinomy; but we relieve this antimony thanks to the practices which imply that I am responsible for my actions, and to the kind of self-certainty which goes with the attestation that I am capable of doing what I am doing with the idea that I am responsible for it; that means that the scientist can go on with his approach to nature which I call in my paper ‘matérialisme professionel’; but it is precisely because theory is itself a practice among the other practices that there is a right coming from the other practices not to impose its approach but to propose it as in competition with the presupposition of scientific knowledge. And so I don’t think that we are able to bridge this logical gap, except if we were able to elaborate, as Leibniz tried to do, a treatise on the radical origin of everything. And if I had to express myself beyond what I wrote, I would say I am convinced that an intellectual interpretation of the narrative of creation provides us with the only reference to the radical production of the universe and of what I would call man as itself: the one that I am as, on the one hand, a part of nature, and, on the other hand, responsible for my own actions; the gap may be bridged not at the level of any of the concerned practices, but at the level of another kind of discourse which is to my mind poetico-mythical. But, then, I may be in discordance with those who believe more than I do in a radical ontology. So, it is rather a kind of confession that I am adding to my paper, in order to be frank with you. ZICHICHI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. J’aimerais remercier le Professeur Ricœur pour cette très stimulante série de pensées. But let me switch to English. I’ll make just three remarks based on your three points. You spoke about verification and falsification, but the major steps in understanding nature, the greatest achievements of science, are due to totally unexpected discoveries. For example, radioactivity gave rise to the discovery of a new fundamental force of nature which has allowed the sun to go on for billions of years. The strange particles, in 1947, were totally unexpected, and allowed us to understand that nuclear physics is not a fundamental force, but a consequence of a more fundamental force, a real one, which is subnuclear physics. So, verification and falsification is not the motor of science, as many philosophers still go on telling us. However, history tells us that the exact definition of technology is the use of science. An example: for ten thousand years, only two inventions have guided all technological developments – the wheel and fire. Neither the

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 25

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

25

wheel nor fire had ever been understood before Galilei. The wheel was understood, not discovered, by Galilei; fire by Einstein. An example of the technological use of science is given by the measurement of time. For ten thousand years, uncertainty in the measurement of time was a second per day with the meridian. Then Galilei invented the pendulum and discovered its laws. Now we speak about picoseconds, one thousandth of a billionth of a second. First science discovers something fundamental, and the applications follow at an exponential rate. So, the best definition of technology is ‘use of science’. Point number three: you’ve correctly quoted Kant, but the meaning of an experiment is not what Kant thought. We are not the masters of nature, as Kant claimed. The meaning of an experiment is to ask a question to the fellow who created the world. An example: after two hundred years of experiments in electricity, magnetism and optics, the mathematical synthesis came out, the Maxwell equations. Lorentz discovered that these equations implied that if time is real, space must be imaginary, and vice versa. For Kant, space and time had to be both real. If space and time were both real, light could not exist, and Dirac could not have discovered his equation which brought us to the discovery of anti-matter. So, the real meaning of an experiment is to ask in a rigorous way a question to the fellow who created the world, and get from him the answer which no one had been able, for thousands of years, to imagine. So, if you allow me to reach a conclusion, I think that science is the discovery of the logic of nature, of a rigorous logic which we started to identify thanks to Galilei who based his method on mathematical rigor: ask a question not using words, but formulating in a rigorous way the question, and then searching for reproducibility in the experimental phenomena. RICŒUR: I am not sure that we get rid of antinomies with the concept of time. The antinomy will return with the opposition between cosmological time and phenomenological time, because with cosmological time we have the pure succession of events and so on, without the reference to the present, the living present, and here I am very close to St. Augustine, for whom the present was the centre of perspective according to the Confessions referring to the three kinds of present: the present of the past as memory, the present of the future as expectation, and the present of the present as intuition. I think the experience of being responsible for anything within this time-structure cannot be derived from cosmological time.

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

26

14:56

Pagina 26

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

BERTI: Oui, seulement une question, Monsieur Ricœur. Au début de votre exposé, vous avez caractérisé le projet de l’épistème, c’est-à-dire de la science comme une forme de vérité. Après, vous avez distingué l’approche scientifique, c’est-à-dire objective, naturaliste, de l’approche philosophique, réflexive, herméneutique. Alors ma question est: est-ce que vous croyez que même l’approche philosophique est une forme de vérité, aussi bien que l’approche scientifique et, dans ce cas, y a-t-il deux formes, deux espèces de vérité? RICŒUR: Je répondrai en improvisant, si vous permettez, en français. Je proposerai l’idée d’une vision polysémique de la vérité. A cet égard, la vérité par observation de la nature, avec l’ascétisme sur lequel j’ai insisté de renoncer à tout ce qui ne serait pas nombre, figure, mouvement, délimite une sphère de la vérité qui oblige, et c’est celle à laquelle tout scientifique se conforme. Mais d’autre part on peut dire que dans le juste, comme requête fondamentale de la pratique, il y a une vérité en ce sens qu’il y a un orthos logos qui préside à cette forme de vérité. Alors, y a-t-il un niveau supérieur hiérarchique? Je dirais oui, moi, en employant avec le Père Stanislas Breton, l’idée de la fonction méta... qui me parait exprimée de la façon la plus radicale dans les Dialogues métaphysiques de Platon, dont le Parménide est vraiment le comble, mais aussi dans le livre De la Métaphysique d’Aristote qui définit les plusieurs acceptions de l’être. Et moi je dirai que, m’étant orienté dans la réflexion sur les pratiques, j’ai fait une sorte de pari sur l’une de ces acceptions du verbe être comme dunamis (puissance) et energeia (acte) couvrant toutes les formes analogiques de l’agir humain, et donc toutes les pratiques; la métaphysique occidentale a fait plutôt le choix de la définition de l’être par la puissance et l’acte; la substance a une productivité qui a été sous estimée, et peutêtre masquée précisément par la version strictement substantialiste du verbe être. Mais cette discussion relève de ce que j’ai appelé la fonction méta, comme chez Platon et chez Aristote et son idée de la pluralité des dialogues métaphysiques de la série Philèbe, Théétète, Sophiste, Parménide constituerait peut-être le discours souverain. WHITE: First of all, I think we all agree that this has been a very exciting presentation, and we’ll probably be discussing it – I am sure – the entire day after we come back from lunch. Professor Singer was getting at it, but it seems to me that literally all of the statements from thought through observation, decision and so forth, do you agree that they have

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

14:56

Pagina 27

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

27

to be in a final analysis, it’s the structure of the brain, whether you’re talking about movement or observation, that is involved just as intimately with decision-making, contemplation and so forth. As a matter of fact, as you know, there is instrumentation now in the form of PET scanning, functional MRI, and so forth, where we can actually find the areas in the brain, still rather grossly, for even something like contemplation. These admittedly are measurements of brain neurochemistry or blood flow. But, I think even the most ethereal undertaking of what you’ve spoken of as spiritual, and I suppose some of us might think it would be perhaps more in terms of mind function, in the final analysis must be anchored in some way to the physical, the physics of the human brain. RICŒUR: The last word is what you said concerns the cortical architecture of all human existence. This is the point of view from outside: but as soon as I speak responsibly of myself as being the authentic author of my acts I speak a quite different language. If you open a juridical text, you’ll never meet the word ‘neuron’, ‘synapse’: this language is inappropriate, because it has another referent. And then I made an allusion in my paper to this plurality of sciences distinguished by their proximate referent; the proximate referent of cortical sciences is the brain; so for sciences the brain is an absolute reality, because it’s an ultimate reference, but it’s a reference for that approach. But for the ethical, juridical discourse we’ll never use this language, we’ll never meet the words belonging to these sciences; not only they are not relevant, but they will be, so to say, parasite words. So, each approach has its own basic language and its ultimate referent, but there is no referent of all referents, except the project of the instauration of the epistème, but scattered thanks to the plurality of what I called thought events, which choose a new basic referent for a new basic science. So, I don’t see any overarching science which would be the science of sciences. MITTELSTRASS: Let me also come back to what Professor Singer said at the beginning of our discussion concerning the two discourses on the nature of man. I mean, to make it short, if we start with a strict semantic dualism, two completely different discourses on the nature of man, I am afraid we are trapped in our own linguistic constructions. It leaves us without any solution, without any chance of a solution in that area. So, wouldn’t it be better not to start with this kind of dualism, but with asking what philosophy, what anthropology can learn from the sciences, and

2.Ricoeur

18-07-2003

28

14:56

Pagina 28

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY RICŒUR

of course also the other way round, what the sciences can learn from philosophy or from anthropology? That is to say, I strongly believe that in philosophy we have to take into account empirical facts given by the sciences, and perhaps in science we have to take into account, let me say, conceptual facts, and of course the philosophy of mind might be the discipline, might be the place in our modern discussions where these two areas, that is to say science and philosophy, meet; so I prefer another starting question. If we start with a dualism, we end with a dualism.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 29

CULTURE AND SCIENCE LOURDES ARIZPE

The concept of culture, in its current use, has been placed, in different periods and disciplines, above science, in opposition to science and within science. It is this polyvalence in meaning that makes ‘culture’ such a sensitive, valued yet sometimes contentious idea. At the end of the 19th century, in the initial stages of scientific anthropological discovery, the term culture was to establish a basic epistemological distinction between natural events and human experience. Culture, in this very broad sense, was defined as ‘everything that human beings have created’. This definition, ipso facto would include science, as well as all other belief systems and institutions of human society. Such a viewpoint locates culture above science, the latter being understood as the human activity that explains the natural world through a humanly intelligible discourse. On the basis of this definition a heuristic opposition was established between ‘nature and culture’ which led to the classical demarcation that separated the natural sciences from the social sciences and humanities. It led to C.P. Snow’s famous title to his book The Two Cultures referring precisely to the difficulties of bringing together the discourse of these two domains. In his book, published in the 1950s, he pointed at what seemed at the time a careening divergence between these two domains which made it difficult to advance towards an integrated, comprehensive understanding of a world made up of both natural and social phenomena. Nature or Culture? In the second half of the 20th century, however, the old debate of whether nature – understood basically as genetics – or culture determined human nature has been all but resolved. It has by examining the cases of

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 30

30

LOURDES ARIZPE

the ‘wolf children’, that is, children who for some reason have grown up in the wild, isolated from all human contacts. It was seen that they could develop a few basic skills such as tool-making, refuge building and so on, and even a primary form of linguistic communication. However, they were unable to advance further in manual or conceptual sophistication. That is, they had lost what it was assumed they had initially, that is, genetically transmitted potentialities for acquiring knowledge, and developing manual skills and complex social abilities. Thus, the current accepted idea is that genetic inheritance provides specific possibilities for individual development which the cultural environment may either help develop to its highest degree or, on the contrary, stunt and underdevelop. A more recent discovery which has confirmed such results are studies of the order of birth of siblings. For the sake of argument let us assume that siblings descended from one couple have exact or very similar genetic structures – granted, it is a momentous assumption – and hence, potentialities for personal development. Recent studies have shown that, even so, the psychological traits, specific skills, social and even political attitudes that each sibling develops may be very different. This has to do with the role that each sibling is assigned according to their birth order. This is why in many cultures there are different terminological concepts that differentiate siblings in this respect, for example ‘primogeniture’ in Indo-European cultures, or ‘xocoyotl’, the youngest son, in the Aztec culture. The eldest son or daughter are expected to give continuity to family traditions, to be an example of respect, responsibility and emotional stability towards their younger siblings and so, in society they tend to be stable, conservative citizens and to reject change. The youngest sibling, in contrast, tends to be less disciplined, freer to explore emotional and imaginative experiences and so, in society, they tend to be artists and rebels. Interestingly, a significant correlation has been found showing that 80% of gold medal Olympic athletes are first-born. Clearly, the physical investment of the mother in the first-born, assuming it is at its optimum, would give such children a greater physical endowment. But it is highly probably that, psychologically, the first-born may also benefit, if we may so presume, from the early harmonious stages of marriages. Culture: Sparks in the Brain Based on such evidence, one could say that nature, through genetic inheritance proposes many potentialities but it is the social and cultural

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 31

CULTURE AND SCIENCE

31

environment which determines the degree to which such potentialities are realized. Clearly, the vibrancy and vitality of people’s lives, barring disasters in the natural environment, will depend on how they interact with other people. This still holds even if the meta-physical is brought into the discussion. It would still mean that social relationships are decisive in allowing or not allowing people to achieve the development held as a promise in their genes or the spiritual fulfillment announced in belief systems. In other words, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, between the physical and the metaphysical falls the social. Not, as the poet deemed it, as a shadow but as the ‘lightness of being’ that fulfills the promise of sustainability for the human world. For, as I have argued elsewhere, it is not the natural world that will ensure the sustainability of our world but rather, the social relationships that will lead people to care for the life-sustaining ecosystems of the planet. It is fascinating to find how well this perspective fits in with the latest discoveries in neurology. As Professor Wolf Singer so clearly explained at the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the more the layers of neurons in the cerebral cortex are able to connect in complex ways, as he expressed it, the greater the possibility humans have of developing higher consciousness. The intensity of connections between neurons is fuelled by the stimuli coming from outside the body. It must be clearly pointed out that, since tiny human beings are so vulnerable all such stimuli during their early years come from their immediate familial and social relationships. That is, the child, left on his/her own, or, to belabour the point, left in the wild, could produce very few stimuli for itself. On the contrary, a child surrounded by a great number of adults or children will receive countless opportunities of receiving and processing such stimuli. Granted that it is the quality of such stimuli rather than simply the number of them that makes a difference, any social scientist would affirm that primary social interactions are responsible for producing the sparks in the brain that lead to full human development. After that, a ‘sparked’ individual will be able to interact with the world in its full richness and mystery. Culture as a heuristic tool for science A different use of the concept of culture, that of constituting a heuristic tool for research, especially in anthropology and sociology, has placed culture within science. Culture was coined as a heuristic concept at the end of the 19th century, by Edward Tylor in the seminal book bearing that title. He proposed a ‘holistic’ definition of culture as a methodological

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

32

14:57

Pagina 32

LOURDES ARIZPE

instrument to be applied to societies understood as totalities. At that time he was in fact reacting to James Frazer’s classic study, The Golden Bough in which he carefully selected beliefs, myths and rituals reported from many different societies, to piece together apparent regularities in the way in which human beings thought about the world and about themselves. As opposed to this view, cultures, Tylor insisted, should be analyzed as a coherent set of norms that human groups create to organize their social relationships and institutions. Since that time, the concept of culture has gone through an evolution as rich as that of human phylogeny but in a speck of time. Already in 1948 Melville Herskovitz published a famous article listing more than 200 different definitions of the term culture. In ensuing years, through the work of Clifford Geertz, Umberto Eco, and the postmodernists, its definition has shifted from defining culture in terms of norms, to that of analyzing it in terms of meanings. In the 1990s, however, the critiques of the concept of culture in anthropology piled up so high that in 1999 Current Anthropology thought it necessary to published an article by Christopher Brumann entitled ‘Culture: Why a Successful Concept should not be discarded’.1 Nonetheless, the term is still much in use in ‘cultural studies’, critical theory, the study of cultural diversity and pluralism, and, interestingly in the ‘culture wars’ in some countries, namely, the United States. Culture, then, is very much within science but, lately, brought into play in a very bellicose way. This reflects what seems to be a paradox in the use of the concept of culture. While it is under interrogation and facing possible effacement in scientific discourse, ‘culture’ has emerged as the term to address many very different political and social issues in current world development. This is why, in this article, I have chosen to briefly describe the intrincate web of meanings and interests behind the use of this concept in current international debates on development. Cultural Challenges in a Globalized World The cultural challenges to humanity in a world in transition give the curious impression that they advance through contradiction. The more globalization spreads, the more fragmentation into particular cultures is on 1 Brumann, Christopher. 1999. ‘Culture: Why a Successful Concept should not be discarded’ in Current Anthropology, Supplement, February 1999.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 33

CULTURE AND SCIENCE

33

the rise. The more communications expand, the more individuals seem to live isolated lives. The more consumption for pleasure increases, the more people lose the meaning in their lives and turn towards drugs, alcohol, obesity, crime or Prozac. The more poverty increases, the more people dream of becoming media celebrities. The more democracy takes root, the less people seem to make sense of their political world and out of fear retrench into intolerant attitudes. Are these temporary phenomena, a passing phase of maladjustments on the way to improved standards of living for all? Or will unprecedented levels of inequality portend a future of perennial conflicts? In any case, the deepening of several different kinds of impoverishment, other than economic, must also be given urgent attention. In fighting against poverty international agencies and national governments are only beginning to understand the very grave consequences of social and cultural impoverishment. The monotonic encouragement of competition as the only and most desirable value is leading to the highest levels of economic inequality in the history of capitalism. In a world context of deregulation, it has fostered greater corruption in both the public and the private sectors, political clientelism and favoritism, discrimination against women and minorities and, most importantly, the destruction of the capacity to cooperate among all. This social impoverishment is very difficult to stem once distrust and violent competition are put into play. Police and military actions may stop the worst delinquent behavior but it will not root out the source of the frustration and hatred. They may, in fact, push violent behavior further towards terrorism. Cultural impoverishment, however, is undeniably the loss that is most irreversible of all. Knowledge that has been accumulated for millennia by many, many peoples around the world, is being wiped out in a few years. Why is this diversity of cultural knowledge necessary in today’s world? There is no doubt in my mind, as an anthropologist, that we need this vast reservoir of alternative knowledge to continue to find the best options for the future by exploring a diversity of solutions in every sphere. Culture, science and society have always advanced by contrasting alternative ways of thinking and doing. Every aboriginal group survived in difficult ecosystems by evolving tools and ideas through trial and error. Every historical epoch presents humanity with unprecedented challenges it must overcome by trying out different strategies. In fact, the genius of the West has been its ability to systematize and to apply knowledge precisely through the experimental method, including other peoples’ knowledge.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

34

14:57

Pagina 34

LOURDES ARIZPE

The term cultures, in the plural, in this restricted sense to refer to contemporary groups of bearers of given cultural traditions, acquires in my view a particular meaning. My definition, in this sense, is that cultures are, simply, philosophies of life. As more and more of these millennia-old cultures become diluted, splintered through diverse forces of current globalization, since the eighties, the United Nations, UNESCO and many international organizations have taken up the challenge to mobilize world opinion towards a new vision of culture for international development. Culture as the Soul of Development As I explained in a recent paper for the World Bank on the ‘Intellectual History of Culture and Development Institutions’, based on the successful experience of the Marshall Plan in Europe, economists used the same economic development model in underdeveloped and decolonizing regions. This model has the implicit assumption that ethical, cultural, religious and social variables were unimportant. Since the sixties, however, studies have constantly shown a discrepancy between the expected results of economic policies and the actual results in their implementation, in the view of social scientists, precisely because such factors have been left out of the debate on development. By the eighties, it was clear that the notion of development itself had to be broaden, as people realized that economic criteria alone could not provide a successful programme of governance, solidarity and well-being. The search for other criteria led the United Nations Development Program to elaborate a notion of human development as ‘a process of enlarging people’s choices’. It measures development in a broad array of capabilities, ranging from political, economic and social freedom to individual opportunities for being healthy, educated, productive, creative and enjoying self-respect and human rights. Culture is implied in this notion but it was not explicitly introduced. It was, however, increasing evoked by several other distinguished groups, such as the Brandt Commission, the South Commission, the World Commission on Environment and Development and the Commission on Global Governance. Building culture into the broader development strategies, as well as a more effective practical agenda, had to be the next step in rethinking development. In this context, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to create the World Commission on Culture and Development.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 35

CULTURE AND SCIENCE

35

This independent Commission was established jointly by UNESCO and the United Nations in December 1992. Chaired by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Commission was composed of distinguished specialists from all parts of the world. Among its Honorary Members, were four Nobel Laureates. Between March 1993 and September 1995, the Commission held nine meetings in different regions. On each occasion, scholars, policy-makers, artists and NGO activists presented specific regional perspectives and concerns. These exchanges allowed the Commission to test its own questions and working hypotheses. It explored different lines of inquiry, consolidating some, abandoning others, and opening up paths not originally envisaged. The first key message by the Commission is that development embraces not only access to goods and services, but also the opportunity to choose a full, satisfying, valuable and valued way of living together in society. Culture for its part, cannot be reduced – as is generally the case – to a subsidiary position as a mere promoter of economic growth. Its role is not to be the servant of material ends but the social basis of the ends themselves. In other words, culture is both a means to material progress, the end of development seen as the flourishing of human existence in all its forms and as a whole. This is why the Commission was also convinced, and this is a second key idea, that issues of development cannot be divorced from questions of ethics. Views about employment, social policy, the distribution of income and wealth, people’s participation, gender inequalities, the environment and much else inevitably are influenced by ethical values. What it is true of development is true with greater force of cultural issues. None of the important questions concerning culture and development could be addressed in an ethical vacuum. Values are always present, either implicitly or explicitly. In its report, entitled Our Creative Diversity, the Commission placed at the head of its concerns the notion of a global ethics that needs to emerge from a worldwide quest for shared cultural values that can bring people together rather than drive them apart. It then explored the challenges of cultural pluralism, reaffirming a commitment to respect all cultures that have values of respect for human rights and for other cultures. It took up the challenge of stimulating human creativity, in order to inspire as well as empower people, in the arts, in the field of science and technology and in the practice of governance. It explored the cultural implications of the world media scene, focusing on whether the principles of diversity, competition, standards of decency and the balance between equity and efficiency, often applied nationally, can be applied internationally. The commission

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 36

36

LOURDES ARIZPE

also addressed the cultural paradoxes of gender, as development transforms the relationships between men and women and globalization impacts both positively and negatively on women’s rights. It was deeply concerned by the potential needs of children and young people and sought ways to bolster their aspiration to a world more attuned to multicultural values and to inter-cultural communication. It cast a fresh eye on the growing importance of cultural heritage as a social and economic resource and also built on the groundwork laid by the Brundtland Commission to explore the complex relationship between cultural diversity and bio-diversity, between cultural values and environmental sustainability. Finally, it set out a research agenda for interdisciplinary analysis of the key intersections between various aspects of culture and development issues. Towards a new global ethics The Commission described the profound need for new global cultural values. Our futures will be increasingly shaped by the awareness of interdependence among cultures and societies, thus making it is essential to built bridges between them and to promote cultural conviviality which I termed convivencia 2 through new socio-political agreements, negotiated in the innovative framework of a global ethics. The role cultures may play in the search for a global ethics is complex and often widely misunderstood. Cultures are often regarded as unified systems of ideas and beliefs with sharply delineated boundaries, yet cultures have always overlapped. Basic ideas may, and do, recur in several cultures which have partly common roots, build on similar human experiences and have, in the course of history, often learned from each other. Cultures usually do not speak with one voice on religious, ethical, social or political matters and other aspects of people’s lives. What the meaning of a particular idea or tradition may be and what conduct it may enjoin is always subject to interpretation. This applies with particular force to a world in rapid transformation. What a culture actually ‘says’ in a new context will be open to discussion and occasionally to profound disagreement even among its members. Finally, cultures do not commonly form homogeneous units. Within what is conventionally considered a culture, numerous differences may exist along gender, class, religion, language, or other lines. At the same 2

Arizpe Lourdes. 1998. ‘Convivencia: the goal of conviviability’ in Unesco World Culture Report, vol. 1:71.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 37

CULTURE AND SCIENCE

37

time, ideas and clusters of beliefs may be shared by people of the same gender and of similar ethnic origin or class across cultural boundaries, serving as bases for solidarity and alliances between them. What about recurrent themes that appear in nearly all cultural traditions? Could they serve as building blocks for a global ethics? The first such source, in the opinion of the Commission, is the idea of human vulnerability and the impulse to alleviate suffering wherever possible. This idea is found in the moral views of all cultures. Similarly, it is part of the fundamental moral teachings of each of the great traditions that one should treat others as one would want to be treated oneself. Some version of Kant’s ‘Golden Rule’ is expressed in practically all cultures and faiths. Many different sets of values would have to be brought to a common ground. It is not necessary to agree with all or give them equal weights but a minimum set of core beliefs would appear to be essential. This minimum set constitutes a point of departure, not a final destination, and the Commission believes that it is possible and greatly to be hoped, that this common ground will increase. The Commission identified five ethical pillars: 1) Human rights and responsibilities, as the set of universal rights which establishes a standard against which international conduct can be judged, 2) Protection of minorities and vulnerable groups such as women and children, 3) Democracy and the elements of civil society whereby in the political arena, democratic processes should prevail so that people’s needs and wishes are taken into account in determining how collective life is organized, 4) Equity within generations and between generations to ensure that all those living today are entitled to the basic necessities for a decent life and those who will come after us will inherit a world of equal or greater choices and opportunities, and finally, 5) Commitment to peaceful conflict resolution and fair negotiation. Diverse culture, equal vulnerability The search for a global ethic must come hand in hand, as the Commission on Culture and Development put forth, with respect for diversity. As stated in the Declaration on Cultural Diversity adopted in the 2001 UNESCO General Conference, diversity is ‘... the source of human capability of developing: we think by associating different images; we identify by contrasting ways of living; we elect by choosing from an array of options; we grow by rebuilding our confidence again and again through dialogue’.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

38

14:57

Pagina 38

LOURDES ARIZPE

In this new beginning, to cope with the momentous challenges of sustainability, governance and convivencia in a global era, we need cooperation on a world scale putting into play the creativity that can be summoned from all cultures and religions. As explained in the Second World Culture Report ‘it is no longer a matter of globalization allowing cultural diversity to continue to develop, it is cultural diversity as a condition without which globalization cannot continue...’. Diversity must also include all the diverse sectors of societies, among them, women. Civilizations have been built by men and women, each with their respective and complementary contributions. Scientists meeting at the World Science Organization Open Conference on the Challenges of a Changing Earth, in July 2001 in Amsterdam confirmed that global warming will have decisive impacts on the life of every inhabitant of the planet. Environmental global change thus creates an equality in vulnerability also deepened by increased interdependence in one single world economic system. In Crossing the Divide it is pointed out that equality in vulnerability heightens the need for a broader, more political dialogue among cultures and civilizations. Thus, it stimulates dialogue. Because the real answer to equality in vulnerability, leading to equality of opportunity, is the adherence to accepted forms of common behaviour by more and more actors on the international scene. This requires, as stated in this report, ‘... an act of decision by each individual member of the international community, no matter how small... Perhaps what we are really talking about is no longer individual enemies for individual countries but a multifaceted enemy for all. The spreading of contagious disease, weapons of mass destruction, unrestricted dissemination of small weapons, poverty, all represent different faces of an “enemy” for the entire human race... If the enemy is common, it follows that fighting against it requires unanimity’. Cultural Values in a Global Era: the Rainbow River At present, globalization, telecommunications and telematics are changing the way in which people identify and perceive cultural values. People still have the tendency to think of the world as a ‘mosaic of cultures’ but this metaphor is no longer adapted to today’s world. As mentioned above, cultures are no longer fixed, crystalized containers but have diasporic, planetary representations exchanged instantly around the world through the mass media and the Internet. As we stated in the sec-

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 39

CULTURE AND SCIENCE

39

ond Unesco World Culture Report, the metaphor that best describes current cultural processes is that of a ‘Rainbow River’.3 We took Nelson Mandela’s image when he referred to South Africa as a Rainbow Nation, and applied it to cultural diversity around the world. Cultural currents may mix or may be distinct for a while but they are all following, all changing, all exchanging, all the time. To go back to the opening paragraph of this paper, as briefly outlined in this paper, the complex history of the relationship of science and culture – in the singular – and cultures – in the plural – explains the different ways in which they are being debated in our contemporary world. The ambiguities in the definition of culture and the implicit assumptions about culture in economic development models led to culturally blind rather than culturally sensitive development policies and programs and to generally well intentioned, yet frequently unsubstantial, institutional responses, both nationally and internationally. Given the problems of globalization, the main challenge for this new century, as stated in the first section of the 2001 World Culture Report, is to find strategies so that ‘...nations and the global community (may) prevent and remedy the deepening of inequality, especially along fault lines, new and old, that coincide with cultural diversity’.4 Such a future will only be possible if science and culture work together to understand and to move the world.

3

Unesco. 2001. World Culture Report. Paris: Unesco. Arizpe, Lourdes, Elizabeth Jelin, Mohan Rao and Paul Streeten. 2001. ‘Cultural Diversity, Conflict and Pluralism’ in World Culture Report, vol. 2. Paris: Unesco: 23. 4

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 40

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARIZPE

RAO: As a sociologist, I thought you could help us clarify a thing that bothers me. I am going to refer to it tomorrow in my presentation. While the diversity of cultures and so on and related aspects are very, very important for this world according to me, science is doing exactly the opposite of that. The effect of science, including IT, globalisation, is to bring uniformity to everything. If anything, it destroys cultures, and has destroyed many language dialects in my own neighbourhood. I will refer to that tomorrow. They say science has nothing to do with this, that science is just discovery, innovation, and so on, but it is not so. Indirectly, science has a responsibility for all this. I do not know if you can say something about that. ARIZPE: Yes, I would be glad to, because we have been going over the same question many times, especially in the commission. I would ask you: do Japan, the United States and France have the same culture? They don’t. They even have different ways of living, different philosophies, different savoir-faire, and yet they all live within a capitalist world and within an international market. So, the question is not whether cultures and development are compatible, but how they can be made compatible, and there are ways. We do realise that there are some cultures that are extremely vulnerable, and these are the nomadic peoples, horticulturalists, and the hunters and gatherers, because their ecosystems are being destroyed by development or by the market or other forces, and there seems no way of stemming this destruction. SINGER: I have two questions. The first relates to wolf children. I just wanted to know how good those studies are, and what the examples are. The second question refers to the dichotomy between science as one source of knowledge and culture or inborn knowledge or tradition as the other. Everybody would agree that one should not destroy the knowledge base that a population of farmers has on how to grow crops and things like that. Also,

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 41

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARIZPE

41

nobody would dispute that there is some intuitive knowledge that takes into account variables that cannot be consciously grasped and put together into a scientific theory because there are just too many of them or they are only known intuitively or through tradition, but don’t you think we have an obligation to destroy false belief systems? In medicine, for example, there are the practices made through so-called ‘overcome knowledge’ which are extremely deleterious to the subjects, and I think there is an obligation for Western scientific medicine to go there and say, ‘Look, this is not good for your patients because there is no ghost besieging them, they have a serious infection’. How about this distinction between the good and bad impact of science? ARIZPE: As regards the studies of wolf children, there have been a number of them, except that the circumstances have always been rather difficult. Several of these cases occurred in the nineteenth century and there has never been a really rigorous scientific study of them because it is so rare for such children to survive. But the conclusion is clear from even these studies: there is a potentiality there that these children never developed. On the dichotomy between science and culture, this is an interesting question because many peasant societies, for example, have an extremely advanced and refined knowledge of plants and animals: ethno-botany, ethno-zoology. Now, are they false? Well, they are not false, you see, because they are based on certain principles that their cultures proclaimed as the most important. In anthropology, ethno-methodology has studied this: the principle of classification of some plants may be whether they are edible or not, and in that sense they open up other options for classification that the Linnean system does not possess. So, there is, I think, a valid ethno-science, but there may also be totally false beliefs linked to forms of social or religious or political control of societies, and that’s an entirely more complex question. ZICHICHI: I was very interested in your stimulating report. Your title was ‘The Cultural Values of Science’, and therefore I am forced to make this remark, because you said that scientific observations and discoveries depend on culture. If this were true, there would be many sciences, but if everything is science, nothing is science. There are many cultures, but only one science, because science is the logic of nature, and there are not two logics of nature, but only one. Since your lecture refers to a very important part of our conference, the cultural values of science, I am sorry to insist in making this remark: there is only one science and many cultures.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

42

14:57

Pagina 42

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARIZPE

ARIZPE: I never said that scientific observations depend on culture. I just said that there was this very broad anthropological definition. I would not say that science depends on culture. VICUÑA: A brief comment on this last remark – perhaps we can say that there are several ways to acquire knowledge: one of them is science. ARIZPE: Yes, I think that would be a good way of putting it. However, I would also add that there may be different logical ways of understanding nature. Is that too heretical? RAO: I would like to make one comment: while there are many cultures and one science, the approach to learning science has a tremendous cultural effect. A young child in a village in India or Bangladesh cannot learn science the same way as a city boy in Rome learns science. I think you should not just say there’s one science and many cultures, It is not that simple, because culture has a tremendous effect on the way we appreciate nature. We wonder whether there is one nature. The way we understand it, the way we approach it, these are entirely different questions. I think that we should not oversimplify this matter. ARIZPE: I would agree on that. ŁOJASIEWICZ: You see, I would like to say, after the observation made by Professor Zichichi that there is only one logic of science, that we observe the world. I am somewhat close to the point of view of René Thom. There are many observations by which we try to describe some phenomena. There are many ways of describing them, many ways of doing this, and I don’t know if we can speak in a very precise and clear way about what logic of science means. It may be very useful to explain what we mean by logic of science. It does not necessarily depend on culture; it may depend on culture, but we have many ways of seeing a phenomenon and describing it, even in a mathematical way, there are many different forms of mathematics, different forms of mathematics applied to describe a phenomenon. I am sorry, I am only a mathematician, I am not a physicist, but it seems to me that, as far as I have heard, and for example I connect here with the ideas of Thom, I do not understand what is meant by the view that there is only one logic of science.

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 43

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARIZPE

43

ARIZPE: Could I just add that there might be one logic of science, but there might be other cultures that have observed things that are scientific in a different way because their needs push them to observe things that a city boy would not need to observe. So, what I mean is that the knowledge accumulated by other peoples can be added to science. Science could go into the molecular or chemical structure of something, but it has already been observed by an indigenous culture. ZICHICHI: The chairman does not allow me to answer, but I can answer you in private. I totally disagree with you. MENON: Mr. Chairman, I did not want to make any major comments here, but I thought that I would just tell you a little story about a question that one of the former members of this Academy, Abdus Salam, used to ask me. He said that when he looked at all the discoveries in mathematics and modern physics of recent times, he always found that, when the group theoretic approach was taken, the people who did it were Jewish in origin, and when he looked at approaches that were not group theoretic but analytical, they were non-Jewish. One doesn’t know whether there is something in the tradition, in the way that children are brought up, which looks at groups and sets as being fundamental to thinking, which enable them therefore to make those discoveries later in life. We do not know about many such aspects; but I think much more study needs to be done on how your cultural setting enables you to look at things. That relates to the approach you take, not getting to a different science. Science, as we all agree, is an attempt at a description and understanding of nature. That cannot be different anywhere. There cannot be a science which is Indian science, or Chinese science, or Western science. But how does one arrive at that description and that understanding? LÉNA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make two very quick points. One is that there is a relationship bridging science and culture, which is language, which of course is absolutely essential in education, and the fact that science, before being expressed in mathematical language, has to be expressed, especially in education, through layman language is a point where the relationship between culture and science occurs, and this should not be forgotten. My second point is quick, it has to do with your remark, Madam, about the ways of looking at things. Sun spots were observed in China with the naked eye almost two thousand years before

3.Arizpe

18-07-2003

44

14:57

Pagina 44

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARIZPE

they were observed by Galileo with a telescope: hence they could have been seen before in the West and were not! This has a direct consequence: had they been observed, then it would have been immediately discovered that the sun was rotating on itself. ODHIAMBO: I just wanted to add a footnote to the question of the approach to scientific knowledge, and I want to give the example of disease. In African indigenous societies, and I am sure this applies to many other indigenous societies, disease is not simply parasitic, it is also the question of connectedness, family connectedness, society connectedness, community connectedness, and when you disrupt that connectedness you become sick, and therefore when you look at disease it is more complex than simply looking at the microbiology. That can be seen and it was very well illustrated by the work of Tom Lambo in Nigeria, who was able to solve psychiatric illnesses much more than anybody else. His first contact was to look at the community connectedness of the person who was sick and he did not try to bring in drugs until much later, and in most of the cases he solved matters without the use of any drugs at all through simply talking to the patient and resuscitating the broken community connectedness. ARIZPE: I agree very much. The point is that if a person feels that a spell has been sent against him, he will die. But this not only happens in Africa. In the whole world why do people die of unrequited love?

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 45

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION WERNER ARBER

Summary Applications of scientific knowledge often refer to technological uses, but their impact on our world view can also be of great importance. Both of these kinds of applications have their cultural values. This view is here exemplified with recent developments in molecular genetics and evolution. Darwinian evolution resides on three pillars: genetic variation (or mutation), natural selection, and geographic and reproductive isolation. It is only since about 50 years that genetic information is known to be carried in DNA molecules. Molecular genetics and the theory of molecular evolution are the fruits of this knowledge. Molecular evolution is investigated by the comparison of genomic sequences and by the study of the molecular mechanisms generating genetic variations. Much of the available knowledge comes from microbial genetics. Genetic variation is brought about by a number of different specific mechanisms, which can be grouped into three different strategies, namely small local changes in the DNA sequences, rearrangement of DNA segments within the genome by recombinational processes, and the acquisition of foreign DNA by horizontal gene transfer. The three strategies to generate genetic variants have different qualities with regard to their contribution to the evolutionary progress. The available data clearly show the involvement both of gene products (acting as variation generators or as modulators of the frequency of genetic variation) and of non-genetic elements in the production of genetic variations. There is no real evidence that genetic variation would in general be a specific response to an identified need imposed by the environment that exerts natural selection. Rather, genetic variation is generally to some degree

4.Arber

18-07-2003

46

14:57

Pagina 46

WERNER ARBER

aleatoric, and it is natural selection together with the availability of appropriate genetic variants which determines the direction(s) of biological evolution. In view of the activities of specific gene products to the benefit of biological evolution a dual nature of the genome becomes obvious. While many of its genes serve for the fulfillment of each individual life, others (the evolution genes) serve at the level of populations for the expansion of life, including the building up and replenishing of a rich biodiversity. The pertinence of this knowledge for our world view, as well as for the strategies of genetic research and its technological applications is discussed. From fundamental scientific research to the application of its results In this presentation I will focus attention to molecular genetics and more specifically to the mechanisms of molecular evolution. Upcoming knowledge on the genetic basis of biological activities and on their specific molecular mechanisms can serve us as guidance to apply that knowledge responsibly with the aim to facilitate the human life. This obviously enriches the patrimony of our civilization and represents thus cultural values. This kind of reflexion applies to many different fields of investigations in the natural sciences, so that the general conclusions regarding cultural values are of wide relevance. Traditional research strategies in the biological sciences are largely observing and descriptive. In recent times experimental strategies of research are given increasing importance. They are often invasive, disturbing the system under study. For example, by knocking out the activity of a gene one can try to identify the biological function of that gene, by comparing the phenotype of an organism lacking the gene function with that of a genetically unaltered organism. Observing and invasive research strategies often differ in the kind and quality of their contributions to knowledge, they are largely complementary to each other. Applying different research strategies often involving trans- and interdisciplinary research is a good means to enrich our knowledge base. Since a knowledge base represents cultural values, these values increase with the increasing richness of the knowledge base. Accumulated knowledge can lead to two kinds of applications. On the one hand, an application can be practical, often technological, and it is frequently invasive, causing some disturbance to the natural situation. Such practical applications may contribute to the shaping of the future, they may exert their influence on the longer-term development of things. On the

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 47

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

47

other hand, the knowledge base is also an important source of our world view; novel knowledge can bring about changes in the generally accepted world view. Intrinsically, the world view represents philosophical, thus cultural values. The responsibility assumed by human beings is largely based on their validated world view. The latter can indeed provide guidance to society in the shaping of the future. This represents an important feedback of the world view to the ways and the intensity by which practical, technological applications of scientific knowledge are made. Similar reflections can apply to policy decisions such as on legal regulations that are related to available scientific knowledge, to the search for novel knowledge and to the practical application of such knowledge. It becomes more and more obvious that the principle of sustainability should govern the influence exerted by human activities on the natural environmental conditions. Therefore, the world view aspects of scientific knowledge deserve as much attention as the immediate utility attributed to technologically based applications of the scientific knowledge base. These considerations shall be illustrated in the following sections by the relevance of a deepened knowledge on the process of biological evolution for genetic research and biotechnology. Quest for molecular mechanisms of biological evolution The theory of Darwinian evolution resides on three pillars: genetic variation, natural selection and isolation. Genetic variation is brought about by a number of different mechanisms causing alterations in the genetic information of an organism. Genetic variants (or mutants) represent the driving force of biological evolution. In contrast, natural selection together with the range of available genetic variants guides biological evolution into specific directions. Geographic and reproductive isolations modulate the evolutionary process. Biological evolution is a relatively slow, but steady process, in which once in a while an individual member of a population of organisms is hit by a mutational event. In ecosystems, mixed populations of different organisms and different variants thereof are steadily submitted to natural selection. Thereby, those organisms that succeed to cope best with the encountered living conditions have a selective advantage, so that they will at longer-term overgrow their competitors. This largely depends on the genetic setup. We know that genetic information is encoded by linear sequences of nucleotides in filamentous DNA molecules. These sequences contain genes and intergenic regions. A gene typically contains an open reading frame

4.Arber

18-07-2003

48

14:57

Pagina 48

WERNER ARBER

that serves upon gene expression to instruct the manufacture of a specific gene product, which is often a protein with enzyme functions. The gene also contains expression control signals that serve to regulate the time and intensity of gene expression. The total genetic information present in each cell of an organism is called the genome. In molecular genetics it has become a habit to call any alteration of the inherited nucleotide sequence a mutation. This contrasts with classical genetics in which the term mutation refers to an observed alteration of the phenotype, that results from the activities of the gene products. We will apply here the molecular genetic definition. Spontaneous alterations in the nucleotide sequences are often attributed to errors upon DNA replication and to accidents occurring to the DNA. An alternative view, to be defended here, is to attribute mutagenesis to the common influence of particular gene products and of a number of nongenetic factors. Evidence for this interpretation can be expected from a deeper knowledge on the molecular mechanisms involved in the generation of genetic variants. At present two approaches are available to explore the molecular mechanisms of genetic variation. One of these approaches is the systematic comparison of available nucleotide sequences of more or less closely related organisms. This strategy involving bioinformatic tools can be applied at the level of a gene for a specific function, at the level of a group of genes and also at the level of the genome. This can reveal single nucleotide changes, the reassortment of functional domains, as well as aspects of the genome organisation. Results obtained in such investigations can provide hints with regard to historical events that occurred to the ancestors of the compared organisms. A more straightforward approach is the study of individual events generating genetic variants. Since these processes are both inefficient and generally not reproducible, their investigation is relatively difficult and has to be mostly indirect, by comparing the nucleotide sequences just before and after an event of mutagenesis. Most of the data available so far on the generation of genetic variants at the molecular level come from microbial genetics, particularly from studies of bacterial and viral genomes. Bacteria are single-cellular organisms that propagate by cell division with typical generation times in the order of 30 minutes under optimal nutritional conditions. This facilitates population genetic approaches. Since the bacterial genome is haploid, spontaneously occurring mutations become phenotypically manifested rapidly.

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 49

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

49

These facts and the relatively small size of the microbial genome render studies of the molecular basis of genetic variation possible. From the available data it is clear that several different specific processes are at work, as will be discussed in more detail below. It is a common observation made by many investigators that useful, beneficial mutations, are rather rare among the spontaneously generated DNA sequence alterations. More often, a mutation inhibits some life functions, thus providing a selective disadvantage (in extreme cases leading to lethality). Many other spontaneous DNA sequence alterations are without immediate influence on life processes. These are silent or neutral mutations. This situation is in line with the view that the spontaneous generation of DNA sequence alterations is in general not a specifically targeted answer to an identified need for adaptation of one or a few specific genes. In other words, there is no good evidence for a strict directedness of spontaneous mutagenesis. Three major, natural strategies with different qualities contribute to the spontaneous formation of genetic variants Referring to a more detailed outline given at the plenary session of our Academy in October 1996 (Arber, 1997), I can limit my presentation to an overview of the various molecular mechanisms that contribute each in its specific way to the generation of genetic variants. These conclusions are largely based on data obtained in microbial genetics, but they are likely to be generally valid also for higher organisms (Caporale, 1999). Spontaneous genetic variation can be attributed to a number of mechanistically different events. These different mechanisms can be classified into three general strategies of genetic variation: local sequence change, DNA rearrangement within the genome and DNA acquisition. Each of these will be briefly characterized here. The local sequence change brings about the substitution, deletion or insertion of a single or a few adjacent nucleotides. It can also result in a local scrambling of a few nucleotides. Several causes for such reactions have been identified, such as a limited chemical stability of nucleotides, a structural flexibility (tautomerism) of nucleotides implying alternative base pairing, other types of replication infidelities (e.g. replication slippage), as well as the effects of some chemical and physical, internal and environmental mutagens. The quality of local sequence changes resides primarily in their possibilities for a stepwise functional improvement of a gene and

4.Arber

18-07-2003

50

14:57

Pagina 50

WERNER ARBER

for the potential adaptation to alternative living conditions. In the long term, a series of subsequent local sequence changes can, in principle, also result in a novel gene function, but one can assume that this comes only to bear once the product of the genetic information in question becomes a substrate for natural selection. To a large extent, local sequence changes are initiated by non-genetic factors, mainly intrinsic properties of matter and responses to interactions of matter. However, various enzymatic repair systems have been developed by living organisms to limit the frequencies of local sequence changes and their detrimental consequences to relatively low levels ensuring a certain degree of genetic stability but still allowing for a low, evolutionarily useful frequency of mutagenesis. Intragenomic DNA rearrangements generally affect DNA segments of variable length. These can undergo deletion, inversion, translocation to another site in the genome, duplication and higher amplification. These genomic changes are sometimes accompanied by additional local sequence changes at the junction sites. DNA rearrangements are often, or perhaps as a rule, brought about by the recombinogenic activities of specific gene products. We call these gene products variation generators. Generally, they work inefficiently and act on the DNA molecules at one of many different possible sites, so that the results of their reactions are not strictly reproducible; they are at most statistically reproducible. DNA rearrangements can bring about novel gene fusions (the fusion of a part of one gene with a part of another gene). This can in some cases result in a novel genetic activity. Alternatively, a DNA rearrangement can also fuse a given reading frame of a gene with a hitherto unrelated signal for the control of gene expression. In the case of the duplication of functional sequences, a duplicate copy can later serve as a substrate for further evolutionarily relevant events while the other copy can continue to exert its normal function. In diploid eukaryotic organisms general (homologous) recombination between the paternal and the maternal genomes, as well as the meiotic assortment of chromosomes, are other well known sources of genetic variations. The third strategy to generate genetic variations, DNA acquisiton, depends on the horizontal transfer of genetic information from a donor to a recipient organism. This process is well studied with bacteria where several different mechanisms contribute to the overall horizontal DNA transfer. The process occurs also in higher organisms where it is, however, less well explored than with bacteria. In the latter case, several factors have been identified to limit gene acquisition to low frequencies and to relative-

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 51

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

51

ly short segments of DNA. This strategy of gene acquisition in small steps represents a sharing in successful developments made by other kinds of organisms. The process is relatively effective: in a single event of alteration of the genome the recipient organism can gain a fully functional activity which may by chance satisfy an upcoming need for adaptation to changing living conditions, such as in the sudden presence of an antibiotic. In view of the occasional horizontal flux of genome segments, the classical evolutionary tree should be drawn with randomly placed horizontal connectors (Arber, 1991). Remember that, in general, relatively short genome segments become horizontally transferred to another organism, while in the vertical transmission of the hereditary information from generation to generation, the entire genome becomes transmitted to the progeny and steadily represents a target for genetic alteration by local sequence changes as well as by intragenomic DNA rearrangements. The theory of molecular evolution postulates the generation of genetic variations to depend on the coordinated action of the products of specific evolution genes and of non-genetic elements There is no doubt that a number of non-genetic factors contribute each in a relatively specific way to the production of genetic variants. As was already mentioned, this mutagenesis often depends on properties of matter such as a certain degree of chemical instability and of structural flexibility of biological molecules. In addition, random encounter also plays its role, such as in the interaction of an enzyme with its substrate, in the random choice of a recipient organism for horizontal gene transfer, or when a DNA segment is hit by a mutagen. On the other side, increasingly strong evidence supports the interpretation that the products of a number of specific genes act primarily for the benefit of biological evolution. Some of these so-called evolution genes act as generators of genetic variations, while others act as modulators of the frequency of genetic variation. Examples for the latter activities are found among the already cited repair systems. The transposition of mobile genetic elements is a good example of a variation generator. The theory of molecular evolution also postulates that those evolution genes that are encountered today in living organisms had been fine-tuned for their specific activities in their own evolutionary development involving second order selection, a selection process acting at the level of populations (Arber, 2003a).

4.Arber

18-07-2003

52

14:57

Pagina 52

WERNER ARBER

Dual nature of the genomic information The genome is usually thought to contain genes with specific tasks to be carried out for the benefit of each individual organism. These are the housekeeping genes and genes of use under particular life conditions. The developmental genes ensuring in higher organisms the development from a fertilized egg to the adult organism can also be counted to this large class of genes of general relevance for each living being. They serve for the fulfillment of each particular life. Until recently, evolutionary developments were generally assumed to depend on errors and accidents occurring to the DNA molecules. In view of evidence for enzyme activities of unique relevance for biological evolution, but dispensible for the individual life span extending from one generation to the next, the view of the existence of evolution genes in the genomes obtains increasing support. If this view is correct, the genomic information must be of a dual nature with regard to its purpose. Clearly, as was already said, many genes act for the benefit of the individuals. In contrast, evolution genes act for the benefit of an evolutionary development of the population, by serving as generators of occasional DNA sequence variations and as modulators of the frequencies of such variations. By doing so, they sometimes cause harm to an essential life function, if a novel mutation happens to provide a selective disadvantage. This has to do with the fact that genetic variation is, in general, a largely random event rather than a precise, directed response to an identified need. The duality discussed here can be seen as a consequence of the engagement of nature to care not only for the fulfillment of individual lives but also for the evolutionary expansion of life and hence, for the evolutionary installment and replenishment of a high diversity of life forms on our planet. It should be added to this discussion that the products of some genes are used for both purposes: for the benefit of the individuals and for the evolutionary development. Genes of this kind may have been evolutionarily fine-tuned to carry out both of their tasks properly. Cultural values of the knowledge on mechanisms of molecular evolution The involvement of products of specific evolution genes for the driving of biological evolution that insures a rich biodiversity implies a widely unexpected and surprising modification of our world view. Nature cares actively for the evolutionary expansion of life. Properties of matter and genetically determined mechanistic capacities of life itself are identified as

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 53

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

53

coordinated driving forces of evolution. This represents an expansion of the Darwinian theory to the level of molecular processes and it strengthens the validity of this theory. The philosophical and hence cultural values of these conclusions are evident. Some of the aspects relating to an evolutionary, permanent creation were discussed in more detail elsewhere (Arber, 2003b), pleading for a reconciliation between, on the one hand, traditional wisdom such as the one transmitted in the Old Testament and, on the other hand, recently acquired scientific knowledge. For several reasons the postulate of the presence in the genome of evolution genes and the knowledge on their ways of action also represent an enrichment for research on genomics and proteomics, as well as for the practical application of the results of these investigations in biotechnology. One aspect clearly illustrated by the enzymes generating genetic variations relates to the widely spread belief that genes encode strict programs for life processes. According to this view, primary gene products are thought to normally serve as enzymes in a sequence of events, the final output of which would be reproducible and therefore also predictable. In addition, the belief is quite widespread that enzymatic reactivities are always efficient. Evolutionarily relevant variation generators do not have these properties. Rather, they are inefficient and in the rare cases of their activities the output (which is a novel genetic variant) is not reproducible and not predictable from case to case. These aspects deserve due attention in the definition of the gene concept. The knowledge on the three different basic natural strategies contributing to the generation of genetic variations forms a welcome basis for the evaluation of conjectural risks of genetic engineering, in particular in cases of deliberate release of a genetically modified organism (GMO). In genetic engineering, the genetic information is deliberately altered in a planned and thus a priori known way, e.g. by site-directed mutagenesis or by the horizontal transfer of a natural DNA sequence from one organism to another kind of organism. In all of these processes the investigator may apply, in principle, one or a combination of more than one of the described three natural strategies of genetic variation, i.e. local sequence change, intragenomic DNA rearrangement and horizontal gene transfer. Thereby, the quantity of involved base-pairs is, as a rule, in the same span as that observed in natural events of genetic variation. The use in genetic engineering of principally natural strategies which must have served in nature since a few billion years for promoting the evolutionary progress can at least suggest to us that conjectural, long-term risks of genetic engineering must be similar to those

4.Arber

18-07-2003

54

14:57

Pagina 54

WERNER ARBER

related to the natural evolutionary process. These considerations have been outlined in more detail in a contribution to a workshop held by our Academy in February 2001 (Arber, 2002). This is a good illustration for how the scientifically based world view can have its feedback on technological applications of scientific knowledge. Such feedback provides means to responsibly carry out technological applications as contributions to the sustainable shaping of the future for the benefit of Mankind. REFERENCES Arber, W. (1991) Elements in microbial evolution. J. Mol. Evol. 33, 4-12. Arber, W. (1997) The influence of genetic and environmental factors on biological evolution. In: Plenary Session on the Origin and Early Evolution of Life (Part I). The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Commentarii Vol. IV, N3, pp. 81-100. Arber, W. (2002) Molecular evolution: comparison of natural and engineered genetic variations. In: The Challenges of Science. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 103, pp. 90-101. Arber, W. (2003a) Elements for a theory of molecular evolution. Gene (in press). Arber, W. (2003b) Traditional wisdom and recently acquired knowledge in biological evolution. Proceedings of UNESCO Conference ‘Science and the Quest for Meaning’ (in press). Caporale, L.H. (Ed.) (1999) Molecular strategies in biological evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 870.

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 55

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARBER

MALDAMÉ: Professor Arber, could I ask you three short questions? The first refers to your slide, the evolutionary tree. What is the importance of this horizontal transfer in evolution? The second question is: in our genome we carry a lot of viral, genomic and bacterium particles. Could they have a role in evolution? And then there is my third question, which is probably difficult and always comes up in discussions. You see, I share your view, but I would like to hear more arguments from you. We have often been told that this is an error mutation. You say that it is not an accident. You say that it’s natural law. What are your reasons for saying this? ARBER: I will begin with your last question. I think it is important that we scientists should not always base our views on textbook interpretations of the available data. We have to have some flexibility. I have become more and more convinced of the major importance of biological evolution. I can therefore not consider that biological evolution could be driven by errors and accidents. Rather, we should look for functions that actively generate genetic variations. Transposable genetic elements are a good example, they exert no other function, as far as we know, than to produce occasionally novel genetic variations. As to the replication infidelities, they largely depend on properties of matter, such as a certain degree of structural flexibility and of chemical instability of nucleotides. These are intrinsic properties, not accidents. In your first and second questions you asked about horizontal gene transfer involving, among other elements, viruses and in higher organisms sometimes even bacteria. The evolutionary role of these elements is well studied with bacterial populations. The horizontal gene transfer is in general a rare event. But if an acquired gene provides to the recipient an advantage, natural selection will not only maintain it, but also amplify selectively the novel hybrid. In this regard we learned a lot by observing the wide spreading of antibiotic resistance genes in bacterial populations due to the

4.Arber

18-07-2003

56

14:57

Pagina 56

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARBER

extensive use of highly selective antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine in the last sixty years. There is still less knowledge on the role played by horizontal gene transfer in higher organisms, where more relevant research is required. But it is known that some viruses can serve as natural gene vectors also in higher animals and thus in man. As to the general importance of horizontal gene transfer, this resides in its different quality as compared to the other natural strategies of generating genetic variants. In horizontal gene transfer an organism may have the chance to acquire from some other organism a genetic function which it had not possessed before. Such an acquisition is a one-step event. If these organisms would have to develop the same function itself, this would be a very laborious multistep process. MALDAMÉ: I have a question. You reported at the end that genes’ actions serve a purpose. What kind of purpose? ARBER: I think the important purpose of many genes is to be seen in the fulfillment of individual lives. In contrast, evolution genes working at the level of populations provide means to produce and to replenish biodiversity. By the way, the knowledge on molecular mechanisms of evolution can offer insights into the sense of life and the sense of death, although only in the context of the evolutionary development. We can compare naked DNA molecules with a closed library: nothing happens as long as there are no readers present. Any potential actions depend on the activities of readers. Reading of the genetic information on organisms is also the prerequisite for life manifestations. Remember that it is the life manifestations, not the DNA molecules, which are the substrate for natural selection. Active life has thus its clear evolutionary meaning. As to the evolutionary sense of death, remember that genetic variation is the driving force of biological evolution. Genetic variation depends on a steady renewal of the populations. Eternal lives could not satisfy this condition. In addition the space for living organisms in the biosphere is limited. The turnover of populations necessitates the death of individuals after having served for some time as substrates for natural selection. SINGER: Prof. Arber, you gave us a very interesting and detailed description of molecular evolution where it can be studied. Would you agree with me that there has been no further evolution in human beings over the last 5,000 years because of a lack of selection pressure and because of a lack of inbreeding?

4.Arber

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 57

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARBER

57

ARBER: I don’t agree. I think we evolve steadily, like any other living organism, but in our short life span we cannot spot evolution so easily – this is not possible. Reading Genesis we can learn that the descendants of Adam and Eve (the products of creation) are not clones with identical properties. Each descendant has a specific character. I see in that description a traditional wisdom that within a species, all living beings are different from one another, and this is exactly the driving force of evolution. So I cannot say that we do not continue to evolve. SINGER: Just a remark referring to your account of creation. Recently I talked to a Jewish priest who told me that in the original text of the Hebrew Old Testament there is a predecessor of Eve, Lilith. She was made out of clay at the same time as Adam, and they had equal rights. She was not part of man, she was no clone, but Adam could not cope with her because she was too self-determined. So he sent her away and she then lived with animals in the region of Jordan, but she had offspring. JAKI: He should have told you that Lilith is in the Talmud and not in the Bible. That is the first thing. The second thing is that whenever a creationist claims that we have to take in a scientific, in a modern scientific sense that God created everything according to its kind, that is, each species separately, we should remind him that if you take one single phrase in the first chapter of Genesis in a scientific sense, then the basic rules of interpretation demand that you should take all the other statements in a scientific sense: then you have light coming before the sun, then you have plants coming before sunlight, and finally you may ask them: did the astronauts wear helmets to protect their heads when they went through the firmament? ARBER: I agree with you that Genesis is not a strictly scientific text. I also became aware that plants were created before animals, and my interpretation is that this is in line with traditional knowledge. You know that animals eat plants, that’s their food. You cannot create animals and then plants only the next day, because otherwise these created animals will die in the meantime. So, there is some logic in the sequence of events. And there is no mention of micro-organisms because human beings did not know at that time that there were microbes around. VICUÑA: This may be a semantic problem, but I wonder if you can eliminate error as a source of evolution, because the enzymes that make

4.Arber

18-07-2003

58

14:57

Pagina 58

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY ARBER

DNA, DNA polymerase, do make errors, otherwise they wouldn’t have an additional activity that allows them to correct those errors. I mean, nucleotides are so similar to each other that I would imagine that an enzyme that is copying a template would make an error. They do the job so fast that they can make mistakes. ARBER: The term error is a human interpretation of some unusual, often unexpected observation. In the case of DNA replication, we know several specific reasons for the incorporation of another nucleotide than the one expected from the sequence of the template strand. One of these reasons are tautomeric forms of nucleotides. These conformational variants are relatively rare and very shortliving. Most importantly for our discussion, they give rise to an altered base-pairing. This can result in a substitution mutation. To my mind, this is not an error and I call it a replication infidelity, which goes back to an intrinsic property of the molecules, their structural flexibility. Another source of base substitution is a certain degree of chemical instability of nucleotides. As a matter of fact, these sources of mutagenesis were among the first to be known, and many textbooks on genetics and evolution generalize and propagate the idea that spontaneous mutations are base substitutions going back to errors in replication. LÉNA: I am struck by a number of words that you have been using. Maybe it is only semantics, but maybe it is more. You have the words ‘error’, ‘help’, ‘purpose’, ‘goal’, ‘use’. I wonder if this is not somewhat anthropomorphic and what Paul Ricœur would have to say on the use of those words to describe molecular biology? ARBER: Well, you may have seen that my talk was actually trying to make a bridge between science and culture, and I used some words that could be more easily understood. What I gave was not a fully scientific talk, although I tried to give you some evidence for my ideas.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 59

SCIENCE AND DREAM PAUL GERMAIN

For many years, I have been impressed by the following statement. Let me quote it in French: ‘L’homme, cet arrière-neveu de limace qui inventa le calcul intégral et rêva de justice’. I am not sure I am able to give an English translation which can imply what is meant by this French statement. Let me try: ‘Man, the distant cousin of the slug, who invented integral calculus and dreamed of justice’. It is found in a book entitled La vie et ses problèmes by Jean Rostand, a biologist who was very interested in ethics, published in 1940 by Flammarion. The phrase was put by Jean Hamburger, a former President of the French Academy of Sciences, just below the title of his book Un jour, un homme, published by Flammarion in 1981. I also quoted it in my paper ‘La science interpellée’, published in La Vie des Sciences in 1990. I found that, with a few simple words, it gave a good definition of man. Man, which means here the human society, who invented integral calculus and dreamed of justice. He is a product of biological evolution, the descendant of animal ancestors. Integral calculus: it is a mathematical concept which has many useful applications in various sciences. Mathematics is the language of Nature. Here, integral calculus means science. Then, humanity appears as the result of a double historical process: a passive one – evolution – and an active one, the creation by man of his surroundings. These two processes are governed by ‘causality’. That means that each element is produced as an effect of a previous one by a rational progression. The final part of the sentence concerns a dream, a vision, a feeling, an expectation. It says that man is unduly hopeful of a better world, a world of peace, of equity, of purity, a realm of fairdealing. Here the dream is oriented by a ‘finality’. A scientific concept, a scientific statement are strongly

5.Germain

18-07-2003

60

14:57

Pagina 60

PAUL GERMAIN

established. They are always progressing. A dream, a vision are never certain, never permanent. They are fragile, delicate. The purpose of this paper is to discuss if such a definition, which states that these two components, science and dream, are and must be present in what is man, is still always valid. I will present my comments in three points. The first one will recall the marvellous gifts of science to man. The second will briefly review the positions and attitudes of scientists about the dream. The last one deals with the new situation which is now encountered by the scientific community. 1. The marvellous gifts of science to humanity Science provides models. In the most advanced disciplines, the models are theories. Starting from a few concepts or basic statements, they give the possibility to predict the properties of a large class of phenomena by a rational – often a mathematical – reasoning. For a given phenomenon, the results given by a theory have to be compared with those obtained by a direct experiment. The smaller are the differences, the better is the approximation given by the theory. Science is steadily improving the quality of the approximation and the domain of applicability of its models. What must be emphasized is the ‘objectivity’ of this knowledge. It means that it may be obtained by any scientist completely independently of his moral, religious, or political convictions. Then, science offers to people the vast domain of scientific knowledge which may be called ‘the world of agreement’, because any scientist, provided he applies the rules of a rational reasoning, reaches the same conclusion. This ‘objectivity’ is the main characteristic of a scientific model or theory which cannot be forgotten, as is often the case. As a consequence, it is not possible to derive from a scientific statement any moral or philosophical conclusion. Science not only offers a large domain of the ‘world of agreement’ to those who want it, but also may offer every child an important contribution to the formation of his culture. This point is the theme of a recent book by my colleague Yves Quéré entitled La science institutrice – Science as a primary-school teacher. It explains and comments the successful operation ‘La main à la pâte’, launched with Georges Charpak and Pierre Léna, similar as far as I know to ‘Hands on’ in the United States. A child who receives such an education will never forget that science is a strong component of any culture and that it is an introduction to the ‘world of agreement’.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 61

SCIENCE AND DREAM

61

Thanks to science we know now that the universe and life have a history. These facts were not known two centuries ago and have been revealed by science. They provide a deep understanding of our human situation. It is so important that some people are prepared to say that science is the motor of human history. The applications of sciences are the source of significant improvements in techniques – and, more recently, of technology – which have produced significant wealth and staple commodities for the benefit of society. They give humanity the possibility of acting directly on its future. The above remarks are sufficient to show the marvellous gifts of science to society. 2. Scientists and the dream Scientists are, of course, aware of the gifts provided by sciences and their applications to humanity. The actions of sciences are going in the same direction. They are ever more powerful. It is certain that science is a strong component of the essence of man. In appearance at least, it is not the same for the dream: beliefs and feelings don’t show a similar evolution. It is not then surprising if scientists have various opinions and show different behaviours in relation to about the dream. To be brief, one may distinguish three main attitudes. First, for some of them, the dream has no importance and therefore may be forgotten or even ignored in the progression of science and of its applications. Roughly speaking, they say that ethical considerations have not to be taken into account against innovations. Second, others consider that, even if one cannot describe exactly the expectations and value of the dream, they are important for the development of humanity. But they think that they would be best achieved through the expansion of the scientific disciplines, especially by the emergence and the development of human and social sciences. Finally, one finds the scientists who have no strong opinion about the possible dream of the society. As they don’t know, they don’t care about it. They consider that it is not their problem. The reasons for these different choices among scientists are related to the source of the vitality of the scientific activity. One source lies in the personal feeling of scientists who, answering the question why they are scientists, say: for amusement, curiosity, pleasure, the satisfaction of discovering something new, to increase my knowledge, to participate in an

5.Germain

18-07-2003

62

14:57

Pagina 62

PAUL GERMAIN

activity which may give people a better life. Many scientists of the 19th century or of the first half of the 20th century had this kind of reaction. They thought that teaching science or working in science were favourable to the ‘dream of justice’. They were the heirs of the scientists and of the philosophers of the time of Enlightenment, who had such confidence in science that they thought that the dream would be achieved by way of expansion of the scientific progress. That is the theme of a book by Ernest Renan, L’avenir de la science, who wrote: ‘It is not an exaggeration to say that in science may be found the future of man. Science alone is able to tell him what is his fate and how he can reach his goal’. Let me quote also Jean Perrin, a Nobel Laureate, who wrote more than fifty years ago, in the book La science et l’ espérance: ‘The progress of science will increase and thought will continuously broaden. The wealth and the power of humans will increase. And then, by a miracle, Humanity will enter a new age. The public has a deep faith in science, a little confused, but deep. He expects that science will bring a liberation and will make possible for everybody access to the pure joys of Arts and Thought’. Of course, nobody would make such a declaration today. But such a hope has not completely disappeared. It remains in what may be called ‘the ideal of being a scientist’. However precious might be this source of vitality of science, it is probably not the most important for explaining its remarkable progress. One of my colleagues, Jacques Blamont, wrote a big book – 940 pages – called Le chiffre et le Songe devoted to what he called ‘the political history of scientific discoveries’. For him, the wish for knowledge is not the essential factor of this progress. He thinks that ‘man’ is a force who wants to build tools to go to a real elsewhere which is not the future brought by religion or metaphysics, a new Earth, a new sea, towards space in the direction of the stars. The whole book is a deepening description of important achievements. His thesis is that they are the result of a triple conjugation. First the prince – that may be a king, a dictator, a man with great power – let us say: the ‘motor’ of the operation. Second, a scientific institution which may mobilize scientists and engineers who have to work together. And then a few great scientists who may have new ideas. Two conditions are necessary to guarantee success: the ‘motor’ must have a clear vision of the goal of the operation and must be able to collect a large amount of money. No big science without a lot of money; no money spent in a big scientific achievement without a clear vision of the goal. The methods to follow, the measures to use, however drastic they may be, are secondary.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 63

SCIENCE AND DREAM

63

Jacques Blamont’s book gives many examples to illustrate these statements. Let us mention quickly two of them, the first from ancient times, the second a recent example. The first: the expansion of science due to the Ptolemes is astonishing. It was possible only thanks to the exploitation of the gold mines of Nubia in which thousands of people – slaves, war prisoners and Greek citizens – were working in appalling conditions. The second concerns the building in Germany during the last war of a large quantity of new arms, V1 and V2 rockets to be launched on England in order to try to avoid defeat. Thousands of people taken from prisoner of war camps or from concentration camps were working as modern slaves, victims subjected to horrible treatment. But this terrible enterprise was effectively, from the scientific and technical point of view, a highly significant step towards the conquest of Space and the leaders were fascinated by this goal, maybe more so than by the success of this new weapon. Most of the scientists and engineers working on such big operations did not agree with the treatment imposed on the workers. In conclusion, looking at the opinions of scientists, one sees that in general there is no direct connexion between their attachment to science and their view about the dream of the society. Extreme positions may be found, some thinking that the dream will follow the progress of science, others that the dream should not be taken into account if it were to slow down the progress of scientific achievements. In this last case, which was exceptional, the dream could have been affected by the progress of science. 3. Science and Society. A new situation today? In this last section, the aim is not to analyse the complex relations between sciences and societies. A few flashes only will be presented in order to see if the phrase I have chosen to comment on this paper is still relevant. Today refers to the few decades – 1 or 2 – before and after the starting point of the millennium. Sciences today appear mainly through what is called ‘technosciences’, which are complex and elaborate assemblies of scientific and technical elements, results and methods, built up in order to produce special goods, machines or equipment. The above description of the system which produces scientific discoveries proposed by Jacques Blamont is appropriate to explain how technosciences may be implemented. Among the great variety of technosciences, three main kinds of ‘motor’ may be mentioned according to the type of goals they are looking for.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

64

14:57

Pagina 64

PAUL GERMAIN

First: ‘the military motor’ whose goal is to strengthen political power – in general of a country – and to assure the safety of its citizens. It is a very important one for which many scientists and engineers are working. It has to support an army, a lot of officers and soldiers, and to give them the best arms they need. These equipments demand a large armaments industry. The budget devoted to these activities is very high. After the USSR collapsed, the possibility of a decrease in this large amount of investment was expected. But unfortunately that is not happening owing to recent events and especially the necessity to face the threat of terrorism. Second is ‘the economic motor’. This too requires great numbers of scientists and engineers working in industrial enterprises and companies to produce goods and services. Some of them are highly important and very powerful. They need a lot of money. They are in general private and belong to the shareholders. If they are successful, the value of the share is high and the number of the shares may be increased. The third: ‘the biomedical motor’ is more recent but its importance is steadily and rapidly increasing. Its principal technosciences belong either to pharmacology or to biotechnology. The first deal with chemistry for producing goods for living beings; the second are special technosciences using living materials or even living beings. One does find in this motor category, big companies working like classical companies with shareholders and patents, but also some laboratories. The latter may receive some public subsidies but also many gifts and donations of varying size, from people who are ready to help medical research to hasten the progress of discoveries for curing frequent and serious diseases like, for instance, cancer or Alzheimer. The technosciences developed by these three motors receive big support and a lot of money from those able to take advantage of what they may offer, meaning people of the advanced countries and especially their rich citizens. These technosciences need to take up a large proportion of the whole of scientific activity, which causes a significant change between fundamental research devoted to knowledge and applications. Moreover the dream of society and also the public’s confidence in science may be affected by their development. Consequently, the relations between science and society may require serious attention. The evolution of societies depends greatly on the development of communications which makes the world what is often called ‘a global village’. Everybody, everywhere, is aware of what happens in the rest of the world, and particularly so of all the modern facilities which are at the disposal of the people living in countries where they can take advantage of scien-

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 65

SCIENCE AND DREAM

65

tific and technical development for improving their individual cultural and social life. The people of the developing countries wish, of course, to be able to enjoy the same advantages for themselves and for their children. Their claim gives rise to worldwide meetings and demonstrations for expressing their expectations. Among these, the conferences organized by the United Nations on major issues of long-time global significance such as environment, population growth or social features including poverty deserve to be mentioned. Many academies of the world were invited to send contributions. A little later, an informal network of academies of sciences, the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) was formed to facilitate further collaboration. IAP invited academies to develop their thoughts on the long-term quality of life of all people and also of the poor countries of the world which urgently require an increase in availability of consumption of some essential resources. Important initiatives took place at the turning point of the century. First, ICSU and UNESCO organized the worldwide conference on Sciences and Societies in Budapest in June 1999, giving the opportunity to nearly 200 nations to express their views. The representatives of the developing countries told of how much they need and expect the help of Science in order to enable them to face their vital problems. Secondly, a year later, IAP called a meeting in Tokyo devoted to a preliminary study of the most important points science and technology might achieve in order to move the world globally to a sustainable way of life. It seems to me that the purposes of these initiatives are part of the new dream which may be proposed to ‘man’, to humanity. That is, to work in order to extend to all people of the world, in the long-term, the gifts which have so far been given to the citizens of the advanced countries – food, health, energy, education – and at the same time, the possibility of building and increasing their own capacity to participate in this action by developing their own level in science and in technology. It is an ideal of solidarity and equity. To make this dream a reality will obviously take a lot of time and strong convictions, in order to overcome the difficulties and the obstacles. It is clear, in particular, that the long-term improvement in the situation of the poor countries will not be possible without important change in the consumption patterns of the richer countries. Since the Tokyo meeting this action has made a good start. IAP has the benefit of a good organization and now has eighty-five academies as members. A programme of four important topics has been adopted, including in particular Science education and Capacity building. Moreover,

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

66

Pagina 66

PAUL GERMAIN

another working structure of fifteen academies, the InterAcademy Council (IAC), has been more recently created inside IAP, with the mission of carrying out studies and making reports for international organizations like the United Nations or the World Bank. Conclusion The statement recalled at the beginning of this paper which implies that science and dream must be present in man, that is in the human society, seems still to be valid, despite the fantastic changes and humanity’s new conditions of life. But the relations of science and society inside this new complex man are modified. The gifts given by science, and in particular by technosciences, have to be understood and appreciated by the public and their dangers avoided. They must also be made available, at least in the long-term, to every nation of the world. It appears that in order to hope to achieve these difficult goals, the academies of sciences have a more important role than in the past. It is not surprising if one agrees with the statement of one former President of the French Académie des Sciences: an academy of sciences is the conscience of the scientific world, and, more than this, the scientific conscience of the world.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 67

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY GERMAIN

ZICHICHI: I enjoyed very much this fantastic contribution of optimism centred on science. We should do our best to transform these dreams into reality. I’ve only one point where I cannot say that I agree with what you said: where you say man is a product of biological evolution. Science is not the product of biological evolution, it’s the incredible evolution of culture in terms of the logic of nature. The species that we belong to is not characterised by biological evolution; what distinguishes us from all other forms of living matter is not biological evolution, it’s cultural evolution. How many millions of years would we have had to wait for our eyes to be able by biological evolution to see New York on television, and how many billion years would we have had to wait to fly at the speed of a jet? So, what distinguishes us is cultural evolution: language, logic and science. GERMAIN: Of course, but I want to comment on a statement of Jean Rostand on man: ‘l’homme, l’arrière petit-neveu de la limace’. I think this is a good way to tell people that if they are here it is because we have had a lot of years, as you say, with all the steps of evolution. I will not say that man is only this thing, but I said this as a comment to the sentence by Jean Rostand. LE DOUARIN: I would like to make a small remark to Professor Germain. You emphasised that science and the progress of science now relies essentially upon large groups of people, big operations involving a lot of money and personnel. Don’t you think that there is still room for small groups of individuals and perhaps even isolated individuals with very creative minds? GERMAIN: First of all I don’t say that all scientific progress is the work of techno-science, but a large part of it.

5.Germain

18-07-2003

68

14:57

Pagina 68

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY GERMAIN

LE DOUARIN: You seem to say on page 7 that in the future the progress of science will be based on extremely large forces which is true, but perhaps this is not the only way to find new ways and new avenues. GERMAIN: No, of course that’s not my hope. I tried to give a description, and I can quote economists and sociologists who say that science has no importance, it is only techno-science which has the power to change the fate of humanity. And of course I’m very anxious to develop what I’ve called the ideal of being a scientist, I’ve repeated this view this morning, and you know that we in France, and I think in other countries as well, are noticing that not very many young people dedicate themselves to science. When they see the sort of style of some companies in the United States, they think that Europe will follow sooner or later. Of course an economy with big companies, even the biomedical, is very different from what they want. What they like is astronomy, astrophysics, mathematics and theoretical physics, because there is no application, no direct industrial application. The ideals of science may still be a source, a good source of what they dream. If the scientific community uses its tools, the IAP, the IAC, I’m pretty sure that young people will be persuaded to act. We have to be convinced of the future of science. RICŒUR: Oui, je dois dire que je ne suis pas très heureux avec le mot rêve, dream, surtout que dans votre papier le complément de mon rêve a disparu, justice. Je n’ai plus jamais rencontré le mot justice. Alors, cette lacune fait que le mot rêve a perdu sa force, et avec lui le calcul intégral, puisque la totalité des projets scientifiques s’est trouvée absorbée et, si je peux dire, colonisée par trois facteurs de... comment dirais-je? Un véritable hold-up sur l’esprit scientifique, parce que les trois moteurs que vous avez cités, le moteur militaire, le moteur économique, le moteur biomédical, ce sont des rêves de puissance... Et donc la justice a disparu, ce qui peut-être impliquait que le mot rêve lui-même n’était pas adéquat, parce que ce qui manquait c’était le mot exigence, et là nous ne sommes plus dans le rêve, et nous sommes plus forts contre la captation des trois projets de puissance. Moi, j’ai l’impression d'avoir plus de respect pour la science que ce que vous en décrivez. GERMAIN: Oui, ce que j’ai visé c’était une des formes actuelles du développement scientifique, pas seulement développement technique, mais une forme qui mobilise beaucoup d’hommes, beaucoup de scientifiques. Si

5.Germain

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 69

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY GERMAIN

69

nous nous plaignons de plus avoir assez d’étudiants qui font des sciences, si on regarde de plus près, comme je l’ai dit, l’astronomie, les sciences de l’idéal que j’ai cultivé toute ma vie ne souffrent pas. Quelles sont celles alors où il y a beaucoup de monde? C’est toutes les sciences techniques. C’est la physique, la physique pure, par exemple, qui a des difficultés. Monsieur Ricœur, je voudrais me défendre sur le rêve. Au début, j’ai dit ce que j’entendais: une vision, un sentiment, une attente, une espérance d’un meilleur monde, un monde de paix, d’équité, de pureté, un royaume de fraternité, voilà ce que j’entendais par le rêve... Je ne vais plus reprendre tout cela, mais pour moi quand je parle du rêve dans la suite c’est cela. MENON: My comment is really not directed towards the speaker, but the Council and in particular the President of the Academy, because I agree with the concluding sentences of Professor Germain when he says that the Academies of Sciences have a more important role to play today than they did in the past. He says that one former President of the French Academy of Sciences has said: ‘An Academy of Sciences is the conscience of the scientific world, and more than this, the scientific conscience of the world’. I agree with that, in which case we have to discuss in what way we can actually perform this task of being the scientific conscience of the world. It is hardly enough for us to discuss issues amongst ourselves. We’ve had many meetings of great value. Last time it was on education. Before that it was on science and development. We have discussed the question of genetically modified organisms and many such other issues. But, somehow, we have to get it across to society at large, to the world. There are many issues facing society today. The question of basic human needs and of meeting them, the question of the economic divide, the digital divide, aspects such as AIDS and many other diseases – one can list a whole range of them. I think it is important that as an Academy, and particularly the Council, for discussions in the Academy, should look at these issues from the viewpoint also of putting these across to society. This may not be the view of everyone. But if it is, how can we perform that role meaningfully? GERMAIN: I’m sure you know about the IAP, InterAcademy Panel on international issues which started in Tokyo, May 2000. The two co-presidents are Yves Quéré and Edward Krieger. They now have ninety Academies, most of them from, of course, developing countries. They will have their next meeting in Madrid next year, and they have a programme

5.Germain

18-07-2003

70

14:57

Pagina 70

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY GERMAIN

with four topics: one is education, one is food, one is water, I don’t remember exactly, health; four good topics. They are not very strong Academies, you know, most of them are recent; they meet and they can say what they want. The IAC has fifteen Academies or so, it was born after the IAP. It is an organisation which hopes to obtain studies and reports from the World Bank, from the United Nations, and the leading man of the IAC is the President of the US International Academy of Science, Bruce Alberts. I attended a meeting of this organisation last July in Paris, and it was about what they would like to do, we are a few people who agree, and Quéré has been very active. But we are few. I would like the world community to know about this organisation. CABIBBO: I’ll be brief. I think the question posed by Professor Menon is very relevant. We devoted a special meeting to that, which was a closed session where the Academicians discussed the future activities of the Academy. You certainly know that this Academy has nothing to be ashamed of in that respect. I mean, the Academy has always been very active on these subjects. So, if you have a specific proposal, we will be happy to implement it with enthusiasm. I should also point out that the Academy is a member of the InterAcademy Panel which was created to discuss these very interesting problems.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 71

THE FACTS OF LIFE CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

Introduction The last fifty years have witnessed major advances in our understanding of the nature and history of life on Earth. The implications of these advances have yet to be incorporated into current philosophical and religious world-views, which are still largely pervaded by animist concepts that belong to an earlier age. The main points at issue are briefly reviewed in the present paper. A more comprehensive treatment of the subject is to be found in a recent book (de Duve, 2002).

FACTS AND THEORIES In considering present-day knowledge, it is important to distinguish between facts and theories. The former may be viewed as incontrovertibly established, whereas the latter, even though they may be supported by all available evidence, remain open to discussion and possible dissent. In the summary that follows, I shall try to make this distinction, although the limit beyond which a theory becomes a fact is not always easy to define. 1. Life Is One All living organisms, including bacteria, protists, plants, fungi, animals, and humans, descend from a single ancestral form, known as the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. The kinship among all forms of life, long supported by their many structural and functional similarities, has now been proven beyond doubt by the sequence similarities among genes that perform the same function in different organisms. Hundreds of such cases are known.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 72

72

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

Not only do the similarities prove descent from a single ancestral sequence. Even the differences are revealing, as they tend to be all the more numerous the greater the evolutionary distance separating the organisms that own the genes, thereby allowing the construction of molecular phylogenies. 2. Life Is a Natural Process Here, again, the proofs are overwhelming. Thanks to recent advances in biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology, we have reached a stage where we may confidently state that we understand life. Admittedly, vast areas, in fields such as embryological development or the functioning of the brain, continue to pose challenging problems to research. Many details remain to be filled in. But the basic processes that support life, those that are common to all living organisms – metabolic pathways, biosynthetic mechanisms, energy transformations, genetic information transfers – can be explained in terms of molecular structures and reactions. This is so true that we can now manipulate life almost at will. An important lesson to be derived from this newly-gained knowledge is that the age-old view of life as ‘animated matter’, which is still implicitly prevalent in much of current thought and discourse, is plainly wrong. There is no such thing as a nonmaterial ‘vital force’ or ‘vital spirit’ that somehow moves the molecular components of living organisms to behave the way they do. Vitalism is no longer tenable. Life is a normal manifestation of matter, entirely explainable in terms of physics and chemistry. Although solidly established scientifically, this fact has yet to become accepted knowledge by much of the general public. 3. Life Is Ancient Alleged vestiges of bacterial life – including fossil traces of microorganisms, mineralized remains of large, complex, bacterial colonies, called stromatolites, and carbon deposits containing an excess of the light 12C carbon isotope over the heavier 13C, taken to be a signature of biological activity – have been discovered in a number of ancient geological sites, some as old as 3.5, or even 3.85 billion years. Doubts have recently been expressed about the authenticity of some of this evidence, putting into question the date of first appearance of life on Earth. This controversy is far from settled, but other, unquestioned signs of past life exist that go back well beyond 3.0 billion years. Furthermore, the organisms that have left such

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 73

THE FACTS OF LIFE

73

traces appear distinctly more advanced than the LUCA is likely to have been; and the LUCA itself must have been preceded by a string of more primitive organisms. Finally, the probability of finding preserved vestiges of past life in ancient rocks becomes increasingly small as the age of the rocks increases, and, with it, the likely destruction of these vestiges by metamorphic and other changes. For all these reasons, it seems probable that life is actually more ancient than the available evidence would seem to indicate. Its age could well exceed 3.5 billion years by an appreciable margin. This age is to be compared with that of the Earth, which was born about 4.55 billion years ago. At that time, some 10 billion years after the Big Bang, the Earth condensed, together with the other planets of the solar system, within a disk of dust and gas whirling around a glowing core that was to become our Sun. Our nascent planet, battered by planetesimals, comets, and meteorites and convulsed by volcanic upheavals, remained unable to harbor life for at least 500 million years. Thus, life may have appeared on Earth almost as soon as the planet became physically able to bear it. This possibility has led some workers to suggest that there would not have been enough time for life to arise locally, so it did not start on Earth but was brought to it from some extraterrestrial site by a comet, a meteorite, or some other means of transportation (even including a spaceship sent out by some distant civilization!). As will be seen, this argument rests on an erroneous estimate of the time needed for the emergence of life. Another piece of evidence put forward in favor of an extraterrestrial origin of life has been the discovery, which will be referred to later, that organic material is widespread in the Universe. However, it is now generally accepted that this material is of nonbiological origin. It thus seems reasonable to suppose that life originated on Earth. An advantage of this hypothesis for the purpose of research is that available geochemical data on the state of the early Earth help to narrow down the problem by defining the physicalchemical setting in which life may have originated. The fact remains that an extraterrestrial origin of life cannot be discounted on the strength of present evidence. Neither can the possibility be ruled out that life originated in more than one site, for example on Mars or even on celestial bodies outside the solar system. As we shall see below, such eventualities are now generating considerable interest. 4. Life Arose Naturally This is a theory, not a fact, as there is no direct proof that life did, or even can, arise naturally. But there is plenty of circumstantial evidence sup-

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

74

14:57

Pagina 74

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

porting such a possibility. Particularly convincing is the fact, stated above, that life is a natural process, entirely explainable without calling on the intervention of some ‘vital spirit’. That such a process may itself arise naturally clearly appears as the most likely hypothesis. From the point of view of research, it is the only acceptable hypothesis. Scientific investigation requires the presupposition that its object be explainable. A powerful argument in support of a natural origin of life has been provided in recent years by the spectroscopic exploration of outer space, the study of comets with the help of instruments borne by spacecraft, and, especially, the analysis of meteorites by means of all the techniques of modern chemistry. These investigations have revealed the astonishing fact that amino acids and other biological constituents form spontaneously in large amounts throughout the Universe. Thus, at least the building blocks of life are natural products of cosmic chemistry. The alternative hypothesis, sometimes formulated by the defenders of an extraterrestrial origin of Earth life, that living organisms are responsible for the synthesis of the detected compounds, is not considered tenable. In the last forty years, numerous attempts have been made to reproduce in the laboratory some steps of the origin of life. Sparked by the historic experiments of Stanley Miller (1953), much of this effort has been directed towards the formation of small, organic building blocks of life. The finding, just mentioned, that such materials readily arise under natural conditions has lessened interest in this line of research. The main focus, nowadays, has shifted to the reactions whereby such building blocks could have assembled into more complex molecules, especially RNA, which, according to all that is known, probably played a crucial role in the early development of life. So far, these efforts have met with limited success. But this is no reason for giving up. What may be needed is a change of approach, calling more on biochemistry than on organic chemistry in the design of experiments. Living cells show us at least one pathway whereby building blocks are combined into complex biological constituents by natural reactions. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there are good reasons to believe that the early chemistry that first produced life already prefigured some of the key processes by which life constructs itself in present-day organisms (de Duve, 2002). The theory of a natural origin of life is far from being unanimously accepted. It is, of course, rejected and even violently combated by fundamentalists and creationists, who put greater store on a literal reading of the biblical account of Genesis than on scientific evidence and who, on this basis, negate not only the natural origin of life but even the existence of a

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 75

THE FACTS OF LIFE

75

LUCA and the occurrence of biological evolution. Many less committed laypersons, some even highly educated, share the same attitude, not so much for religious reasons than because of the largely unconscious, ingrained vitalism that still pervades all that has to do with life. To this point must be added the powerful prejudice against ‘spontaneous generation’, popularized by what may well be the most celebrated experiment by Pasteur, who, incidentally, was a confirmed vitalist. This prejudice rests on a misapprehension. What Pasteur showed, and nobody will deny, is that microbes cannot arise spontaneously overnight in a sterile broth protected from aerial contamination. What origin-of-life research attempts to elucidate is a process of gradual ‘complexification’ that must have taken a considerable amount of time to give rise to the first primitive microbes. In recent years, opposition to the notion of a natural origin of life has been voiced by a very small but vocal minority of scientifically trained persons who, while subscribing to the notion of a LUCA appearing de novo on Earth and evolving into present-day living organisms, claim that these phenomena could not possibly have taken place by purely natural processes, but required the intervention of some nonmaterial guiding entity that forced the raw materials of life to interact so as to produce the first living cells and also, as will be mentioned later, directed the further course of evolution (Behe, 1996; Dembski, 1998; Denton, 1998). Known under the name of ‘intelligent design’, this theory, which is close to vitalism, has been magnified much beyond its merits because of its alleged philosophical and theological implications. I shall come back to it when discussing evolution. Let me simply state now that serious flaws have been detected in the scientific arguments brought forward in its support. The question of the origin of life deserves one additional comment: it is a chemical problem. What needs to be unravelled is the pathway, itself made of chemical reactions, between two kinds of chemistry: cosmic chemistry and biological chemistry. This fact entails two implications. First, the process must, for kinetic reasons, have been relatively fast. What is meant by this term is difficult to evaluate. My own estimate of the requisite time is anything from centuries to millennia, perhaps tens of millennia or even more, but certainly not tens or hundreds of millions of years, as was once believed by those who, for this reason, defended an extraterrestrial origin of life (see above). The fragility of many of the intermediates involved in the process precludes such very slow reactions. A second consequence of the chemical nature of the processes responsible for the origin of life is that these processes must have been highly

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

76

14:57

Pagina 76

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

deterministic and reproducible. Like all chemical processes, they depended only on the physical-chemical conditions that prevailed where they happened, and they were therefore bound to occur under those conditions. This opinion is not shared by all scientists. On the contrary, the most widely held theory, for a long time, was that life arose as the outcome of highly improbable, chance events, so improbable that they are most unlikely to take place anywhere else, any time, and could very well not have happened on Earth either, were it not for the fantastic stroke of luck that made them possible. I shall discuss this theory later, in relation to the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. Let me just point out that its defenders unwittingly – and unwillingly – provided support to those who claim that life could not have arisen without the help of some special agency, or even an act of God. From a fantastic stroke of luck to a miracle, the mental step is short. 5. The Theory of Evolution Is More than a Hypothesis In those words, Pope John-Paul II, addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in a solemn session, on 22 October 1996, expressed the acceptance of biological evolution by the Church. Considering the implications of this statement, the evidence that convinced the Pontiff must be truly decisive. And so it is. Actually, the Pope’s statement was overly cautious. Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, implicit in the common descent of all living organisms and established with the same degree of certainty. Thanks to the information provided by fossils and complemented by molecular phylogenies, we have a rough idea of the timing and manner in which evolution has proceeded. A schematic outline of its main steps is shown in Table 1. Bacteria were the sole representatives of life on Earth during more than one billion years. The first eukaryotes emerged around 2.2 billion years ago, probably as the outcome of a long evolutionary history of which no fossil trace has yet been found; they remained unicellular for more than another billion years. It is only after life had completed some three-fourths of its history on Earth that primitive multicellular plants, fungi, and animals first appeared, slowly giving rise to more complex forms. The animals, in particular, went through more than 99-hundredths of their own history before producing the last common ancestor of humans and their closest relatives, the chimpanzees. In the final hominization stage, Homo sapiens sapiens, our nearest forebear, appeared only about 200,000 years ago. In absolute terms, this is a huge expanse of time: 100 times the duration that has elapsed since the birth of Christ. In relative

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 77

77

THE FACTS OF LIFE

Table 1. THE HISTORY OF LIFE

MILLION YEARS

EVENT

(approximate)

-15,000

Big Bang

- 4,550

Birth of Solar System (Earth)

- 4,000

Earth Habitable

- 3,500

First Bacteria

- 2,200

First Eukaryotic Protists

- 1,000

First Plants and Fungi

- 600

First Invertebrates

- 500

First Fish

- 400

First Amphibians

- 350

First Reptiles

- 225

First Mammals

- 70

First Primates

-6

Last Common Chimpanzee-Human Ancestor

- 0.2

Homo Sapiens

- 0.030

Cro-Magnon

- 0.002

Birth of Christ

0

Present

+ ???

End of Humankind ?

+ ???

?????

+ 5,000

Explosion of Sun (Earth Uninhabitable)

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

78

14:57

Pagina 78

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

terms, however, it is little more than one twenty-thousandth of the age of life on Earth, or the equivalent of the last half-hour in one entire year. Two directions may be distinguished in the course of evolution. One, which I call vertical, proceeds in the direction of increasing complexity: from bacteria to eukaryotes; from unicellular protists to pluricellular plants, fungi, and animals; and, in each of these groups, from simple to increasingly complex organisms, with – at this point in time – the human species as summit in the animal line. At each level of complexity, horizontal evolution has produced a wide diversity of organisms, making up the rich array of species that compose each class. 6. Natural Selection Is the Main Mechanism of Biological Evolution Modern molecular biology has provided powerful support, as well as a large amount of additional information, to the theory of natural selection first proposed by Charles Darwin. Many details of the theory are still being discussed, sometimes heatedly, among experts. But its main elements are largely undisputed. To start with, there is heredity, the phenomenon whereby properties are transmitted from generation to generation. Known as an empirical observation by Darwin and his contemporaries, later quantified by Mendel in a manner that implied the existence of units of inheritance, or genes, this phenomenon is now understood in detailed molecular terms thanks to the discoveries of molecular biology. Next, there is variability, which creates breaks in genetic continuity and allows the start of new evolutionary lines. The phenomena responsible for the breaks, called mutations, can now likewise be described in molecular terms and related to a number of physical, chemical, or biological causes acting in a manner that is well understood. Finally, natural selection screens the mutant products of genetic variability according to their ability to survive and produce progeny under prevailing environmental conditions. In addition to being a logical necessity, natural selection has been seen in action, at least on the short term of human observation, in a number of instances. Resistance to toxic chemicals is a prominent example that has been documented in bacteria, protists, plants, and animals. The most important information provided by modern biology is that the genetic changes responsible for evolutionary branchings are strictly accidental events, totally devoid of intentionality. Mosquitoes do not become

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 79

THE FACTS OF LIFE

79

resistant to DDT in order to escape from the toxic effect of the pesticide. Those rare individuals that happen to be resistant to DDT survive and proliferate in the presence of the chemical. All that is known of the mechanisms involved imposes this interpretation. In simple terms, this understanding implies that each of the many forks that have, over almost four billion years, delineated the course of evolution, is the product of a chance genetic change that happened, again by chance, to take place in an environment conducive to the survival and proliferation of the mutant form. These facts are recognized by a vast majority of life scientists, even though there may be disagreements on certain details or side issues, such as the importance of neutral mutations, genetic drift, and the mechanisms of speciation, to cite only a few. Exceptions are the few defenders of ‘intelligent design’, already mentioned above, who claim that certain key steps in evolution, for example, the transformation of reptiles into birds, could not possibly have taken place by a strictly Darwinian mechanism and that some hidden agency must have guided the process according to a pre-set plan. The following quotation illustrates this viewpoint: ‘It is hard not to be inclined to see an element of foresight in the evolution of the avian lung, which may well have developed in primitive birds before its full utility could be exploited’ (Denton, 1998, p. 362). Note the terms ‘foresight’ and ‘before’, which are characteristic of this kind of thinking. Intelligent design is but a new word for a theory known as ‘finalism’ (from Aristotle’s final causes). Favored by a number of biologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, finalism slowly yielded to the convincing arguments of Darwinism and has now been abandoned, together with vitalism, in response to the advances of modern biology. Its present revival in the face of all the evidence against it is not scientifically justified, as has been abundantly shown (see: Miller, 1999; de Duve, 2002). The theory of intelligent design would hardly be worth mentioning in a serious scientific context were it not for its amalgamation – consciously advocated by its supporters – with so-called ‘spiritualist’ philosophies, in opposition to the crass ‘materialism’ allegedly professed by scientists. Thus, intelligent design has become a rallying banner, enthusiastically hailed in some religious circles, for a number of philosophers, theologians, and creationists of one ilk or another, who emphasize that ‘science does not explain everything’, a statement, incidentally, few scientists would take issue with. Such confusion of some vaguely conceived animism with religion is unfortunate. It hardly helps the cause it is supposed to serve, which can only be weakened by identification with a dubious

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

80

14:57

Pagina 80

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

scientific theory. Among the many thinkers who have expressed themselves on this point, special mention deserves to be made of the late French philosopher Jean Guitton (1991) and the American biochemist Kenneth Miller (1999), both practicing Catholics. Our understanding of the underlying mechanisms gives chance a central role in each of the many branchings that trace the course of evolution. According to most experts, this realization enforces the conclusion that evolution, including, in particular, the advent of humankind, has depended on such a large accumulation of fortuitous coincidences that its repetition anywhere, any time, cannot possibly be envisaged. In the words of Ernst Mayr, one of the most distinguished and respected representatives of the field, ‘an evolutionist is impressed by the incredible improbability of intelligent life ever to have evolved’ (Mayr, 1988). As will be seen, many have gone one step further and used this view as an argument for denying any significance to humankind. Although seemingly inescapable, the conclusion reached by such scientists is not flawless (de Duve, 2002). Contrary to the intuitive perception sometimes evoked by the notion of randomness, chance does not necessarily exclude inevitability. All depends on the quantitative ratio between the number of opportunities provided for a given event to happen and the probability of the event’s happening. Given enough opportunities, an event may be almost bound to take place – within limits of physical feasibility, of course – however improbable it may be. This notion is highly relevant to evolution, which usually involves large numbers of individuals – millions, if not billions or more – competing for available resources, generation after generation, for up to millions of years. What this means in practice is that, in many cases, the genetic variants offered to natural selection cover the field of possibilities so extensively as to make the outcome almost predictable, given the environmental conditions that prevail. Witness in support of this affirmation the many cases of drug resistance already referred to – an almost unavoidable consequence, so it seems, of introducing a new drug into the environment – as well as many other remarkable instances of adaptation – mimicry is a good example – that have been marshalled in support of finalism in the past, and still are cited by the defenders of intelligent design today. Allowing for a number of exceptions, the conclusion suggested by these considerations is that, in many cases, mutations are not the limiting factor of evolution, leaving the main role to the environment and its vagaries. It is important here to distinguish between horizontal and vertical evolution

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 81

THE FACTS OF LIFE

81

(see above). In horizontal evolution, which involves variations of the same body plan, environmental conditions play the leading role. Mimicry illustrates this point. Absent green leaves, no insect with leaf-like shape and color would be selected. Things are different in vertical evolution, in which significant changes in body plan – from reptile to bird, for example – take place by way of intermediates that must all be viable and capable of successfully proliferating under prevailing conditions. The inner and outer constraints that narrow down the course of such pathways are stringent, and the role of chance is correspondingly reduced. In a number of instances, there are only one or very few courses for evolution to take, and the environment does no more than passively determine whether a course will or will not be taken. Such considerations are relevant to the widely accepted view that so many chance events have been involved in evolution as to make it virtually impossible that a similar unfolding could ever happen elsewhere. This, no doubt, is true of many details of horizontal evolution, although, even here, one is impressed by many remarkable instances of convergent evolution (Conway Morris, 1998; Nevo, 1999). But when it comes to the main directions of vertical evolution, including the advent of humankind, the constraints may be such that, given appropriate conditions, similar directions may well be followed time and again, without the necessary assistance of a guiding agency. 7. Earth Life Has up to Five Billion Years Left for Further Evolution Cosmologists tell us that the Sun will have exhausted its stores of energy in about 5.0 billion years, at which time it will expand into a red giant, enveloping the Earth in a fiery embrace and making the planet unfit for life. Other planetary catastrophes may extinguish life earlier, but probably not before 1.5 billion years, according to most estimates. Even this lower value is a truly enormous time, more than twice the evolutionary history of animals, 250 times the leap from chimpanzee to human, 200,000 times humankind’s written historical record, some 20 million human lifetimes! The higher estimate allows life a future longer than the whole of its past. What will happen in such huge expanses of time is obviously impossible to predict, or even to visualize. But some surmises based on past history are permissible. First, it is likely that life, which has survived so many planetary cataclysms, will persist in one form or another until the Earth becomes utterly uninhabitable. Next, it is safe to say that life will not

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

82

14:57

Pagina 82

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

remain at a standstill. Evolution, including our own, will continue, eventually leading to new forms that could be as different from present-day organisms as are sequoias from seaweeds or human beings from sponges. In particular, as will be mentioned below, if vertical evolution keeps proceeding in the direction of increasing complexity, beings with mental faculties much more highly developed than our own may well appear one day. This, however, is only one scenario, inspired by past history. A much more dismal future could await life in general and humankind in particular. Evolution could regress, the biosphere could become poorer, humankind could disappear. The crucial factor here is that natural selection, although still operating, will no longer be solely in charge. Humankind now holds its future and that of life on Earth in its own hands. I shall come back to this point at the end of my essay. 8. Life, Even Intelligence, May Be Widespread in the Cosmos This statement expresses a mere possibility, so far unsupported by any concrete evidence and long considered most unlikely by the majority. Opinions have changed. Many scientists now consider the existence of extraterrestrial life likely enough to justify great efforts and expenditures. A new discipline, named astrobiology, has formed around this topic. Explorations of Mars and other parts of the solar system aimed at uncovering signs of life have been carried out and more are planned. The search has extended to nearby stars, creating considerable excitement with the discovery of the first extra-solar planets. Even extraterrestrial intelligence is actively looked for by attempting to detect signals from any distant civilizations that may exist. Although these efforts have not met with any success so far, the possibilities that inspire them appear plausible, perhaps even probable. In the preceding pages, I have defended the notion that life was bound to arise under the physical-chemical conditions that prevailed at the site of its birth. The main reason for this contention is that the processes involved were essentially chemical in nature and, therefore, highly deterministic and dependent only on existing conditions. A corollary of this view is that, if the same conditions obtain elsewhere in the Universe, life would likewise arise at that site and would have the same basic chemical properties that characterize life on Earth. With some 30 billion Sun-like stars in our Galaxy alone and about 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, the likelihood of the existence of other planets sufficiently similar to the

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 83

THE FACTS OF LIFE

83

Earth to be capable of giving rise to life would seem to be very high. Most astronomers agree on this point. Whereas the existence of extraterrestrial life is now considered likely by a majority of scientists, opinions are much less sanguine concerning the likelihood that life may evolve to produce intelligent, humanlike beings. As mentioned above, many evolutionists see this eventuality as most unlikely and view humankind as the unique product of an extremely improbable concatenation of chance events. It may be significant, in this respect, that the participants in the SETI project (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) are mostly astronomers. The biologists’ skepticism may not be justified. As I hope to have shown, the well-established role of chance in evolution is restricted by two factors that are not always sufficiently appreciated. One is the richness of the mutational field presented to natural selection, with the result that the outcome under given environmental conditions often ends up limited to a small number of (optimized) possibilities. The other factor to be taken into account is the stringency of the inner and outer constraints that tend to channel evolution in the vertical direction whenever the opportunity arises. According to this line of reasoning, the emergence of humankind – and also, incidentally, that of beings of higher intelligence in the future – turns out to be a much less improbable event than is often maintained. That extraterrestrial life may evolve in a similar direction is also, by the same token, a realistic possibility.

THE HUMAN CONDITION Our philosophies and religions, our social systems, our laws, our cultures, our civilizations, even our sciences and our cosmologies, are all traditionally centered on humanity. Terms such as human rights, human dignity, human freedom have acquired quasi-mystical status, under the unifying notion of humanism, which, from its literary origin in the Renaissance, has become the rallying concept of all human-centered reflections and activities. How could it be otherwise in a world where ‘species-ism’, the allegiance to one’s species, has been deeply etched in by natural selection? It has required modern science to shake the foundations of anthropocentrism. After relegating our abode to a speck of cosmic dust orbiting around one in one hundred billion stars, in one among one hundred billion galaxies, science has now shown that we are one out of millions of twigs that have branched from the tree of life on Earth over a span of some four

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

84

14:57

Pagina 84

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

billion years. This realization is only beginning to be felt by people outside scientific circles. Scientists disagree on its significance. In this essay, I focus on three aspects of humankind that I believe particularly deserve to be taken into account: transience, meaning, and responsibility. 1. The Transience of Humankind This is probably the most revealing lesson of modern biology; it is also the most disturbing. For most of the existence of life on Earth, we were not around. We will most likely cease to be around long before life disappears from our planet. We are no more than a transient manifestation of life, a stage in its long evolution towards diversity and complexity, almost certainly not the ultimate outcome of this process. Most likely, the road to humankind consisted of small increments – notably in brain size – without any sharp discontinuity. The perceived break between humans and their closest primate relatives is the artificial consequence of the lack of surviving missing links. The slow evolution of stone cultures over more than two million years illustrates this course in impressive fashion. It is only after the human species had acquired its characteristic modern features that cultural evolution started picking up, thanks perhaps to the acquisition of language, and went on proceeding at an ever increasing pace, up to the vertiginous rate we see today. According to anthropologists, there has been no significant increase in the size of the human brain – and presumably in its associated mental capacities – during the last 50,000 years. An interesting question is whether such an increase will, or can, occur in the future. Whether it will occur may depend to some extent on our own interventions, as I shall mention below. Whether it can occur will only be known if it happens, but the possibility can hardly be ruled out on the strength of present knowledge. It is illuminating, in this connection, to look from an historical perspective at the development of the human brain and the associated mental abilities. As already emphasized (Table 1), the last hominization steps have taken a remarkably short time relative to the preceding history of life on Earth and to its likely future. This fleeting period has been witness to an amazingly rapid increase in brain size, which, in just a few million years, has grown to three times the size it had taken one hundred times as long to reach before that. The cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness, has expanded even more – more than four times – during that period. As illustrated by selected examples in Table 2, there has been a parallel expansion

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 85

85

THE FACTS OF LIFE

Table 2. THE GROWTH OF MENTAL POWER

CEREBRAL CORTEX (cm2) 500

PERFORMANCE ABILITY Fishing Termites with Stick

1 000

Chipping Stone Tools

2 200

Sending Man to the Moon Nuclear Power, Supercomputers Genetic Engineering Big Bang, Quarks, Relativity Natural Selection, Double Helix Lascaux, Sistine Ceilings, Guernica Angkor Vat, Parthenon, Chartres Well-tempered Clavier, Ninth Symphony Divina Commedia, Hamlet Holy Bible, Discours de la Méthode

4 000

???

of mental performance, from the crude manifestations of purposeful intelligence shown by chimpanzees to the highest achievements of human culture. What if the cerebral cortex should expand even further? This question is unanswerable with our present brains. Beings better endowed mentally are as impossible for us to imagine as would have been Moses or Einstein, or even the humblest of illiterate humans, for Lucy, the young australopithecene female that roamed the Afar region, in East Africa, some 3.0 mil-

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

86

14:57

Pagina 86

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

lion years ago. What our minds do allow, however, is our raising the possibility and considering its implications. Such a development need not necessarily take place in the human line. Humankind could disappear, and some other evolutionary line could take over and eventually lead to beings mentally superior to humans. There is certainly enough time for such a happening. All this is speculation, of course. I mention it simply to underline the fact that there is no objective reason to assume that humankind occupies some sort of evolutionary summit beyond which evolution in the direction of further complexity is impossible. Another possibility that now deserves seriously to be taken into consideration is that other intelligent beings, some perhaps even mentally superior to us, may exist elsewhere in the Universe. Because of the immensities of cosmic times and distances, such beings may never come to be known to Earth humans. But their existence appears sufficiently plausible, if not probable, to be included as a possibility in any world-view. What all this amounts to is that humanism, while continuing to rule our societies within the framework of human concerns, must be dissociated from anthropocentrism, the philosophical view that gives humankind a privileged position within some sort of cosmic blueprint designed around and for it. Whereas the former deserves to be maintained for obvious pragmatic reasons, the latter needs to be abandoned or, at least, amended by our philosophies and religions if they aim at universality. Admittedly, this necessary reappraisal will not be easy. 2. The Meaning of Humankind In the eyes of many biologists, the reappraisal called for by science is drastic. It entails the recognition that there is no meaning whatsoever to humankind. We are no more than the accidental product of an enormous number of highly improbable chance events that could very well never have taken place, whether on Earth or anywhere else, and, therefore, are totally devoid of significance. Propagated by persuasive advocates, this view has gained acceptance in scientific circles and, even, in part of the general public, as being the irrefutable message, however unpalatable, of modern biological knowledge. It has, in turn, evoked an anti-science backlash among the many who, for one reason or another, find the message exceptionable. The favor with which the ‘intelligent design’ theory has been received is partly attributable to this reaction. By making claims that contradict our most

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 87

THE FACTS OF LIFE

87

intimate convictions, it is contended, science disqualifies itself as a valid approach to the truth. In my opinion, this conflict is unwarranted, largely because the popularized notion of the total contingency and, hence, meaninglessness of humankind rests on false scientific premises. As I have tried to make clear, there are solid scientific reasons to see the advent of humankind as much more probable than is generally believed, which, in turn, leads to the conclusion that we belong to a Universe in which the generation of intelligent beings is very likely, if not obligatory. This notion has been defended by some cosmologists and physicists under the name of anthropic principle, which is based on a number of calculations showing that if any of the major cosmological constants had values only slightly different from what they are, our Universe would not have produced conditions compatible with the existence of life and mind. Hence the conclusion that we live in a Universe ‘made for us’. The calculations supporting the anthropic principle have not been challenged. But the defenders of cosmic contingency have disputed its significance on the grounds that our Universe could be just one in what the British astronomer Martin Rees (1998) has called a ‘multiverse’, a huge collection of universes with all kinds of different constants. As chance has it, so this interpretation goes, our Universe happens to have constants suitable for life and mind to arise and so has come to be known. But this, like biological evolution, is a pure matter of chance; it also is meaningless. As I have explained elsewhere (de Duve, 2002), I do not accept this conclusion. Whatever the number of universes, ours remains, in my opinion, supremely significant. Life and, especially, the human mind, with all it has produced – the sciences, the arts, the philosophies, the religions, the social, political, and ethical systems, in short, all the fruits of civilization and humanism – are such remarkable manifestations that they can be but telling revelations of what I call ‘Ultimate Reality’. In this respect, I accept the premises of the anthropic principle, but not its name, which smacks too much of anthropocentrism. To the human-focused notion of a Universe ‘made for us’, I prefer the more neutral view that we live in a Universe conducive, by way of life, to the generation of increasingly powerful means of elucidating its secrets and apprehending its mystery. This, to me, is a meaningful Universe, even though I find myself unable, with my limited mental abilities, to grasp exactly what this meaning is. Perhaps, some day in the distant future, some beings may do better.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

88

14:57

Pagina 88

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

3. The Responsibility of Humankind Even though humankind may be only a stage in an ongoing continuity, its advent represents a watershed. The two are not incompatible. Salamanders walk, fish don’t; birds fly, reptiles don’t. Yet a continuous chain of intermediates links the ones to the others. What distinguishes us radically from our primate cousins is our ability to understand the world and to manipulate it accordingly. Especially, it is the moral responsibility that goes with this ability. This realization is recent. Up to a few decades ago, humans, at least those who are identified with the so-called higher civilizations, behaved as though they had been given the world for their indiscriminate enjoyment and exploitation. It is only recently that more far-seeing concerns have started to be voiced on the consequences of human interventions. In answer to these concerns, measures have begun to be taken or are contemplated, even though reluctantly, to protect the environment, avoid pollution, save the remaining forests, shield endangered species, preserve the ozone layer, decrease the emission of hothouse gases, in short to counteract the harmful effects of prior, unrestrained, human plundering of natural resources. Note that, except for a few true ‘nature lovers’, the motivation behind these concerns and measures is still largely anthropocentric. Only in the face of glaring and serious threats to human welfare or prosperity are restrictions recommended, enforced, and accepted. We still look at the world as our own but are moved to husband it better, the way we would our capital. Even here, however, self-interest stops too often at national boundaries for truly effective actions to be taken. One can only hope that global self-interest will prevail over narrow, local preoccupations before some of the damage inflicted on the environment by human activity reaches the point of no return. Leaving these matters to the experts and decision makers, I wish to address a new and much more exacting challenge to human responsibility, occasioned by the developments of biotechnology. As of now, we already have the means to engineer life in many ways. The scope, precision, effectiveness, and ease of such interventions are increasing almost daily. Soon, we will be able to modify existing life forms and to create new ones almost at will, thus supplanting natural selection and replacing it by human intentionality, in the direction of evolution, including our own. All over the world, voices have been raised in alarm at the prospects opened by these new capabilities. The sacredness of nature is invoked. All

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 89

THE FACTS OF LIFE

89

kinds of ethical safeguards, rules, and laws are clamored for. Powerful bodies, including many governments and the major religions, have demanded that some interventions, such as human cloning, be banned outright and that many others be severely restricted. The more aggressive environmental movements go so far as to resort to violent opposition. In the face of all this turmoil, one must note first that there will be no going back. Biotechnology is here to stay and will inexorably move forward. Whatever restrictions are imposed, there will always be some exception to allow a new type of experimentation, be it only in a more permissive country. It is significant, in this respect, that the International Bioethics Committee created by UNESCO did not, in its 1997 ‘Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights’, proclaim the inviolability of the human genome, contrary to the desire of many of its members. It must be noted next that the human impact on biological evolution is hardly new. For some 10,000 years, breeding and agriculture have modified animal and plant species to a point that their wild ancestors are hardly recognizable in their modern descendants. More recently, the advances of medicine have begun to change the human gene pool to a significant extent and not always for the better, since harmful genes are now given opportunities for spreading that they did not enjoy before. What has changed is that our means have become much more powerful and, especially, can be applied consciously and deliberately to much more specific and predictable ends. Finally, we must admit that there is nothing intrinsically bad about trying to improve on nature. The argument that nature is sacred and should not be tampered with is scientifically invalid. ‘Mother nature’ exists only as a myth. She is neither wise nor benevolent; nor does she have any allegiance to the human species. Scorpions and the AIDS virus are as much objects of its solicitude as are butterflies and poets. Nature is governed entirely by natural selection according to an intricate network of influences that pit the conflicting interests of different organisms against each other (struggle for life) within the constraints imposed by their interdependence (ecosystems). Surely, to substitute reason for this blind interplay can hardly be condemned. In fact, such a takeover may be seen as part of the privilege – and burden – of being human. The only serious problem raised by biotechnological developments is whether we, as humans, possess enough collective wisdom for the exercise of our newly gained mastery over the living world. This question is particularly acute as concerns the human applications of biotechnologies, especially at the germ-line level. The current opposition to a new form of eugen-

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 90

90

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE

ics is probably justified in this respect. To give our fellow human beings the license to direct future human evolution may well appear to many like giving children a box of matches. Nevertheless, children do get hold of matches and a few even set fire to the house. The others eventually grow wiser and use the matches for good purposes. I have a suspicion that this is what will happen to directed human evolution. Probably, many egregious mistakes will be made. But, some day, our distant successors will put humankind on the right course and lead it on the way to more penetrating intelligence, finer sensibility, greater compassion, and, especially, deeper wisdom. If this does not happen, it will be up to natural selection to start a new, more successful line. There is plenty of time for that. Final Comments In this essay, I have endeavored, to the best of my ability and with as much objectivity as I can muster, to clarify, as much for my own benefit as for that of my readers, the manner in which recent scientific advances, especially in the field of biology, affect our perception of the human condition. Not altogether surprisingly, some of my conclusions are not readily reconciled with the traditional image of humankind one derives from the Bible and other sacred writings. It is not for me to decide how this discrepancy will be resolved. I can only, as a scientist, present the established facts, generally accepted theories, and likely surmises allowed by the present state of knowledge. Acknowledgments Neil Patterson has kindly given this paper his customary, critical, and constructive attention and helped me put it in final form. I thank him warmly for his valuable assistance.

REFERENCES Behe, M. (1996) Darwin’s Black Box, New York: The Free Press. Conway Morris, S. (1998) The Crucible of Creation, Oxford University Press. de Duve, C. (2002) Life Evolving, Oxford University Press. À l’Écoute du Vivant, Paris: Odile Jacob.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 91

THE FACTS OF LIFE

91

Dembski, W. (1998) The Design Inference, Cambridge University Press. Denton, M. (1998) Nature’s Destiny. How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, New York: The Free Press. Guitton, J. (1991) Dieu et la Science, Paris: Grasset. Miller, K. (1998) Finding Darwin’s God, New York: Harper Collins. Miller, S.L. (1953) A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions. Science, 117, 528-529. Nevo, E. (1999) Mosaic Evolution of Subterranean Mammals, Oxford University Press. Rees, M. (1998) Before the Beginning, Reading, M.A.: Perseus Books.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 92

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

LE DOUARIN: Thank you very much for this very stimulating lecture, which is now open to discussion. COYNE: Just a very direct question based on my ignorance of neurosciences. The emphasis upon the surface area of the cortex, rather than upon the chemical complexity of the content, is it just surface area of the cortex or is it the chemical complexity of what is contained? DUVE: Largely the surface area. But it is not just the cortex. The whole brain has increased in complexity. The brain mass has increased three-fold during the last part of the hominization process; it is three times the mass of the brain of our nearest chimpanzee ancestor six million years ago. I mentioned the cortex, because it is believed to be the seat of consciousness. DE

COYNE: So the functional complexity of the human brain does not go linearly with the surface area of the cortex, or does it? DE DUVE: I don’t know about linearly. All I can say is that the surface area of the cortex has increased more (four-fold) than the brain mass (three-fold).

COYNE: You said that for the evolution of life certain chemical steps should be highly probable to evolve life. I would suggest that from evolved chemistry to life is probable, not necessarily highly probable. DE DUVE: I didn’t quite say that. My point was that because the origin of life depended on chemical steps and because chemistry depends on deterministic processes, the phenomena that led to life must have been highly probable under the conditions that existed at the time.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 93

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

93

COYNE: Yes. And the other question is: you mentioned that for the first eukaryote to evolve on earth we assume that it took 25% of the life of the planet, 2.2 billion years out of 9 billion years. DE DUVE: The first eukaryotes are believed to have arisen at least 2.2 billion years ago. With life starting about 3.5 billion years ago, perhaps earlier, this means that life may have gone through about one-third of its history before eukaryotes appeared. But all these figures are very rough approximates.

COYNE: So you say about 25% of the life of the planet. My question is: do you think that on other planets it could take much longer than 25%? DE

DUVE: Much longer.

COYNE: Yes, much longer. I mean, life is highly probable on other planets, provided that the first step is not long enough, is not too long. DE

DUVE: Life is probable.

BATTRO: Yes, thank you Professor, your paper was very interesting, but in my profession I do not deal with the double brain but with the half brain, and we can say that it is exactly more or less half the surface, but to test my students I say: in a normal brain we have 1012 neurons. What is the half of 1012? And this is a kind of trap, because mainly, or mostly, they say 106, which it is not. The half of the brain has an enormous number of neurons. Therefore my interest is: with this half brain some people are very intelligent and some even go to university. Perhaps the question is: what is the minimal architecture we need in order to be intelligent or human? This is a question we can deal with, and I am astonished every day, working with these kids or young men, how much they perform with only half a brain, and therefore I do not know really if we need so much brain to be human. Certainly not, because these persons are human, but what is the minimal architecture you need in order to prove Pythagoras’s theorem? This is a scientific question, and I can say that at least half a brain is enough. DE DUVE: Thank you, I think you are making a very interesting point. But we cannot discuss the details because I am not familiar with them. First of all, when you say half a brain, is it their left brain, their right brain, did they lose it by accident or did they have a complete brain to start with or what?

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 94

94

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

BATTRO: Normally this is a result of surgery. DE

DUVE: Surgery?

BATTRO: Surgery performed when they were young. They had both hemispheres but because of epilepsy or a tumor one was removed. Professor White is here and he did one of the first hemispherectomies. DE

DUVE: On a young man?

BATTRO: I know one young man who is 18, and he had his left language dominant hemisphere removed when he was 10, and now he is entering college, and we are astonished, it is like saying that the planets move in square orbits. We certainly imagine the plasticity of the brain, which is enormous. Therefore, this kind of experiment of nature shows that you can perform like a perfect, normal being in many cases with only half a brain. What is this brain power? Perhaps it is related not to sheer power but more to the architecture, the intricacies of that. Therefore, and in order to finish this, if we have 1012 neurons and you add all the neurons that are in the human species, it is around the Avogadro number. But this number is a very tiny part of all the animal neurons that are on earth today, and these other neurons could some day be transplanted into a human brain in order to provide new tissue for a disabled brain. Therefore I think the way evolution goes is that we can and we will introduce non-human neurons into the human brain. Well, this is not a wild idea; some people are trying to do that too. DE DUVE: This becomes very technical, so I thank you for your comments. I will just say that half a human brain is not a chimpanzee brain, and what would a chimpanzee do with half a brain?

BATTRO: Well, they also do a lot. CABIBBO: Well, I have two questions. One has to do just with the size of the brain. Perhaps it is not a question of brain size but really the invention of communication. Efficient communication and language were really a big bang for humanity, and maybe there is nothing comparable in the future, nothing much bigger than that. So, maybe you see that this has shown that we are not working with one brain but with Avogadro’s number of neurons.

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 95

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

95

DE DUVE: The development of language was, of course, a very important step. Some workers believe that it was the development of language that inaugurated what is sometimes called the ‘Great Leap Forward’, the extraordinary acceleration of cultural evolution that started some 50,000 years ago.

CABIBBO: But language gave such an advantage, because it allowed sharing, conservation, storing, etc. That’s one question. The other one I would like very much to examine from the point of view of the necessity of life, cosmic necessity. I think it is not necessary; for all that we know life could be very improbable, it just happens that we are here, I mean, we were lucky, so we cannot really know. Maybe a measure could be when we will be able to start exploring many other planets, or getting into communication with some of them, although it will not prove very much, because maybe these other planets have not waited enough, but it is a statistical thing, we don’t know really. I know that my opinion is rather extreme, but even if it is highly improbable, quantum mechanics will make sure that at least in some branches of the quantum universe you do have life, so it’s enough that it is possible. ARBER: I very much appreciated your paper and largely agree with it. If I interpret your statement correctly, I can expect that sooner or later, on some other branches of the evolutionary tree, forms of higher intelligence will develop. Is that your idea too, i.e. not only humans can and will undergo a cultural development? And then the last statement said the future is in our hands. Are you going to cut off these other branches, or are you going to manipulate the human branch? You should tell us what is in our hands. What do you mean by ‘the future is in our hands’? DUVE: What I meant is that we now have the ability of knowingly and deliberately shaping the future of life on our planet, including our own future, in a totally unprecedented manner. Already now, the new technologies, especially their application to human beings, are raising many problems. And these problems are nothing against those that will confront coming generations. The increase in our brain power has given us science and the means to apply the discoveries of science. But it may not have given us enough wisdom to handle this power. We may do a lot of good, but also a lot of harm, including possibly causing our own disappearance. This is what I meant by saying that ‘the future is in our hands’. DE

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

96

14:57

Pagina 96

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

RICŒUR: Yes, my question is about your last sentence. The future, you say, is in our hands. Your whole discourse was the discourse of an observer; but the last sentence is heterogeneous to this discourse. Is it the case that we are responsible? DE

DUVE: Je ne vous comprends pas.

RICŒUR: Je disais que votre dernière phrase est hétérogène par rapport au reste de votre discours qui était celui d’un observateur, et votre dernière phrase, “le futur est dans nos mains”, est d’un homme responsable. Vous êtes passé d’un discours descriptif à un discours de prescription, parce que le mot “nos”, nos mains, our hands, nos, suppose la possession par un homme responsable de son action. Alors, votre dernière phrase ce n’est pas la conclusion, c’est un autre discours appartenant à une autre région de notre culture que la science. DE DUVE: Je ne saisis pas la distinction philosophique. Lorsque je dis que l’avenir est dans nos mains, je me contente de faire une constatation. Je ne prescris en rien.

RICŒUR: Non, là il fallait dire le futur est dans ses mains à lui, l’homme dont on a parlé dans la description. LE DOUARIN: Très bien. Merci pour cette mise au point. LÉNA: My question is related to the point you made that chance does not exclude inevitability. If we assume, and I agree with you on the likelihood of life in many places in the universe, and possibly in an infinite number of places if the universe is flat, i.e. infinite, as it seems to be now, then the number of sites where life happened can be extremely great: you give a number of the order of 1015, but it could be even higher, and then the occurrence of us is inevitable, is no longer a matter of chance, because almost all of the possible cases will be realised in this random process. DE

DUVE: I won’t disagree with that.

JAKI: It seems to me that you take a too optimistic view about the great number of earth-like planets, and consequently on the very high probability of organic and intellectual life elsewhere outside our planetary system. Now,

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 97

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

97

even from the purely biological viewpoint, the origin and development of life on earth heavily depends on the presence of a very strange body called the Moon around it, which is an exceedingly rare occurrence. Now, with respect to the intellectual development of life on earth, especially scientific development, it begins essentially with Greek astronomy, with Aristarchus, Eratosthenes and Ptolemy. For these people the presence of the Moon, a body of a given size, of a certain visual distance is absolutely indispensable for working out their geocentric hypothesis, and those hypotheses were absolutely indispensable for Copernicus; Copernicus was absolutely indispensable for Galileo, Galileo for Newton, and so forth. In other words, if we restrict our consideration of intellectual life on earth, we must conclude that the evolution of science is a most improbable phenomenon largely controlled by the presence of the Moon and we have a moon around the earth through an exceedingly rare glancing collision between the earth at a particular phase of its development and of an unknown body. Now, I am not sure whether you are familiar with the book Rare Earth published by two members of the National Academy of Science, which created quite a stir in the United States. Its conclusion is that life elsewhere in our whole galaxy is exceedingly unlikely. One of the authors is an astronomer, the other is a biologist, and they are very prominent people. They say that much of our galaxy is exceedingly hostile to life, and then in that book finally – which is about 330 pages long – there are three pages in which the earth, the bearing of the earth-moon system, is discussed. So, I’m very sorry, but I have to disagree with your optimism on strictly scientific grounds. DUVE: I disagree with you. I have read a few books myself. You certainly know that other astronomers and cosmologists have a different view. DE

RAO: My first question was covered by him a few minutes ago, but I don’t want to be too euphoric about this. You know, the number of human beings who actually use the surface area of their brains is very, very small, so what I wanted to observe is this. You’ve used probability in all your arguments. Even scientific discoveries have been made by a very small number of people even though the large population of human beings possesses this large surface of the brain. Therefore, having a greater surface doesn’t mean more discoveries. I don’t think it is a linear function. Second, you mentioned the environmental factors. Werner Arber also said how antibiotics destroyed so many... have made us resistant. Environmental factors and various factors that we are going to create now in this world may have a

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

98

14:57

Pagina 98

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

completely different effect on these happenings, including man becoming brainier and so on. I feel that we have to worry about the environment a bit more, not ignore the environment. DE DUVE: As you know, this distinction has been made by many people. Relativity, natural selection, the double helix, or whatever was bound to be discovered some day. But the ‘Wohltemperiertes Klavier’ would never have been composed if Johan Sebastian Bach had not existed. So, there is a big difference between a scientific discovery, which is just finding something that is there to be found (if you don’t find it, somebody else will), and a work of art, which is something irreplaceable. Something that depends on the unique brain connections that belonged to Bach, Shakespeare or Leonardo.

ZICHICHI: I would like to thank you for this impressive list of facts on the origin of life. However, I would like to ask you to add a detail, which could be an important fact; namely that if I give you billions of molecules having the same chemical composition, the same understanding that you correctly emphasise, no one would be able to transform this amount of inert molecules into living ones. Your series of impressive facts should have as a scientific consequence two basic points. Firstly, the reproducibility of phenomena. You said we understand the origin of life from the chemical point of view. You should add that nobody is able to transform any amount of inert matter into living matter. This is point number one. Point number two: no one is able to formulate in a mathematical way this impressive series of facts. After two hundred years of experiments in electricity, magnetism and optics, we end up with the Maxwell equation. Your very impressive list, which I appreciated very much, should have two concluding points: one, it lacks experimental reproducibility, i.e. no one is able to transform any amount of inert matter into living matter; second, no one is able to express in a mathematical form the synthesis of this very impressive set of facts. These facts bring me to the third point, which refers to life in the cosmos. The cosmos has existed for twenty billion years. In the cosmos there are, as you know, about a hundred billion galaxies, and each galaxy has on average a hundred billion stars. Our sun exists since just five billion years. There are fifteen billion years already gone for all other stars, billions of billions. Therefore, if life was so easy, why did not other fellows reach what we’ve been able to reach in ten thousand years, the number of years for our civilisation? These fellows of the cosmos should have been able to

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 99

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

99

send us messages, because they are smarter than us: we are just very young, they are 15 billion years ahead of us. Where are they? They should exist in billions of forms. We have existed for only 5 billion years, but the cosmos has existed for 20 billion years: we have missed 15 billion years, and billions of billions of stars where a civilisation in ten thousand years should have produced an immense amount of smart guys able to communicate with us. You gave us a very fascinating presentation. Please add in your impressive list these three points in order to make the list complete and to ensure that everybody has the complete picture. DE DUVE: You have said a lot, so it is difficult for me to answer all your questions or remarks. But let us start with the first one. I did not state that life arose naturally. I said this is my working hypothesis, consistent with what we know of the nature of life. It is true that nobody has so far been able to generate life in the laboratory. But, to me, this working hypothesis is the only one that can motivate research. You cannot try to understand something that you believe a priori to be unexplainable. Hundreds of investigators are presently occupied with the problem of the origin of life and have already obtained very interesting results. As to why other civilisations, if they exist, have not tried to communicate with us, this question, as you know, was already asked by Fermi. There are many answers, including that the best proof of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials is that they have not tried to communicate with us. But that is a joke. In actual fact, many efforts are being made to detect messages from extraterrestrial civilisations. In the United States, there is a special institute for this, the SETI Institute (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence). An enormous effort is also being devoted to the detection of extrasolar planets that might bear life and, perhaps, intelligence. Of course, astronomical distances are so enormous that the probability of such a search being successful is very small, even if the Universe should be teeming with life and intelligence.

LE DOUARIN: Thank you very much for these very optimistic conclusions. There is one pressing question, the last one, because we are late. VICUÑA: I think it’s clear that this was a very provocative and fascinating lecture. Statement number three: you said that life arose naturally by a large number of chemical, highly probable steps, and from that statement I would deduce that life arose several times on earth, but your first state-

6.De Duve

18-07-2003

100

14:57

Pagina 100

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY DE DUVE

ment says that all living beings are descendants from a single ancestral form. Do you mean then that other forms of life are extinct? Why is it that all living beings descend from a single form if at the same time you say that life arose naturally by a large number of steps whereas according to the laws of chemistry that are deterministic you would expect that life would have arisen several times? That is one question. DE DUVE: There are many possible answers to your question. It could be that conditions were right for life to start only in one place. Or that incipient life went through a selective bottleneck out of which the universal common ancestor emerged. And so on. My point was that life is a chemical process. When Professor Zichichi tells us that nobody is able to transform inert matter into living matter, that is of course not true. We and all other living organisms do exactly that.

VICUÑA: Dr. de Duve, I agree with you of course that life is explainable in terms of physics and chemistry; it has to be, and we cannot fill the gaps of our ignorance with, you know, religious beliefs or other types of knowledge. Our duty, as scientists, is to try to explain life as a natural phenomenon, irrespective of the type of faith that we may have. So, the question is: I suppose that we already have all the knowledge we need to define life, but why is it that there are so many definitions for life? DE DUVE: This is because every definition emphasises one aspect, like the elephant in the story. My own definition of life is simple, even simplistic: life is what is common to all living beings. This is not a tautology, because it excludes many things from the definition of life. To be alive, one does not need a brain, or wings, or legs, or green leaves. One does not even need many cells. One does not need mitochondria. What remains is what is indispensable and common to all living beings. This is still quite a lot. If you look at my few remaining brain cells and at the colibacilli in my gut, you will find the same basic chemical components, the same core enzymes, the same central metabolic pathways, the same ATP, the same mechanisms for storing information in DNA, replicating the DNA, transcribing the DNA into RNA, translating the RNA into proteins, the same genetic code, and so on. That is what I call life.

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 101

MODERN COSMOLOGY AND LIFE’S MEANING GEORGE V. COYNE, S.J.

Introduction Modern cosmology, as well as ancient mythologies, cosmologies and cosmogonies, bear witness to the immense power which drives us humans in our continuous search for a deeper understanding of the universe and our place in it. They also bear witness to the insufficiency of our search for understanding, of the need for something or someone out there, beyond oneself. From time immemorial we have always sought this further understanding in a person with whom we could converse, someone who shared our capacity to love and be loved and our desire to understand and to accomplish. Our attempts, therefore, to understand the universe have as much to say about ourselves as they do about the universe. In fact, in us the universe can reflect upon itself and from our reflections there grows the conviction that we are part of that upon which we are reflecting. As soon as we set out with the powerful instruments for telescopic observations, together with those of mathematics and physics, to understand the universe and our place in it, we are made aware that we are standing on the shoulders of giants and that the path which has led to what we know today has been, with respect to a human lifetime, a long and arduous one and that many have gone before us. But, in comparison to the age of the universe, it has really been quite a short trek. Let us review some of the important things we have learned about the universe during that trek. The Universe of Modern Science If we look in infrared light at the center of Orion we see boiling gas and dust. If we look even closer up we see incandescent regions buried in

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

102

14:57

Pagina 102

GEORGE V. COYNE, S.J.

that gas and with the Hubble Space Telescope we see the fine separation of blue gas and red gas in the midst of a rather chaotic structure. The fact is that stars are being born in this gas. And where the hottest, most massive and, therefore, brightest stars are already born, they are irradiating the gas, and it is giving off hydrogen alpha radiation. In this way we can identify star birth regions. The region of star birth in Orion is just a little part of our Milky Way. Our Milky Way, like most other spiral galaxies, measures 100,000 light years across and it contains about a hundred billion stars. It has several beautiful spiral arms and the sun is located in one of the outer arms, about 2/3 of the distance from the nucleus of our galaxy. We have reconstructed the plane of our galaxy the Milky Way with a mosaic taken by an infrared satellite. We see myriads of stars but we also see dark areas where there are none or very few stars. It is precisely this dark stuff out of which stars are born. These dark areas are really veils of gas and dust hanging down and hiding the stars that are embedded in them. How is a star born? It happens by the laws of physics. A cloud of gas and dust, containing about 100 to 1,000 times the mass of our sun, gets shocked by a supernova explosion or something similar and this causes an interplay between the magnetic and gravity field. The cloud begins to break up and chunks of the cloud begin to collapse. And as any gas collapses, it begins to heat up. In this case the mass is so great that the internal temperature reaches millions of degrees and thus turns on a thermonuclear furnace. A star is born. Thermonuclear energy is the source whereby a star radiates to the universe. Stars also die. A star at the end of its life can no longer sustain a thermonuclear furnace and so it can no longer resist against gravity. It collapses for a final time, explodes and expels its outer atmosphere to the universe. This may happen nice and peacefully or it may happen in a violent cataclysmic explosion, called a supernova. The most famous of these is the Crab Nebula which has a pulsar at the middle as its dead star. So stars are born and stars die. And as they die they spew leftover star matter out to the universe. The birth and death of stars is very important. If it were not happening, you and I would not be here. In order to get the chemical elements to make the human body, we had to have three generations of stars. A succeeding generation of stars is born out of the material that is spewed out by a previous generation. But now notice that the second generation of stars is born out of material that was made in a thermonuclear furnace. The star lived by converting hydrogen to helium, heli-

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 103

MODERN COSMOLOGY AND LIFE’S MEANING

103

um to carbon, and if it were massive enough, carbon to oxygen, to nitrogen, all the way up to iron. As a star lives, it converts the lighter elements into the heavier elements. That is the way we get carbon and silicon and the other elements to make human hair and toe nails and all of those things. To get the chemistry to make amoebas we had to have the stars regurgitating material to the universe. Humans Come on Stage Obviously this story of star birth and death is very important for us. Out of this whole process around one star, which we call the sun, a group of planets came to be, among them the little grain of sand we call the Earth. An amazing thing happened with that little grain of sand. We know it happened and we deal with it every day, but we should still pause to think about the amazing occurrence in the 16th and 17th centuries with the birth of modern science. We developed the capacity to put the universe in our heads. We do that by using mathematics and the laws of physics, of chemistry and of biology. How is it that I can claim without hesitation, as I did above, that there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and that the galaxy is 100,000 light years across? I obviously could not go out there and measure those quantities directly. And yet I claim that those measurements are as accurate as the measure of my height and weight. I can have the same certainty because I have been able to use the laws of physics and mathematics and chemistry and biology to put a galaxy, the universe, in my head and work with it. Of course some measurements in cosmology are more certain than others, but we really are certain about the mass of our galaxy. Because it rotates we can use the law of gravity to measure the mass of the galaxy in the same way as I measure the mass of the earth and the other planets going about the sun. The law of gravity will give you the total mass of the galaxy. The Questioning Human Brain Once we developed this capacity to put the universe in our heads, we became passionately interested in asking all kinds of questions. I would like to ask a few. Did our planetary system come about by a miracle? Absolutely not. Although we do not know everything about how it came about, we know that it happened in conjunction with the formation of the sun. Gas and dust were left over from the birth of the sun, and this gas

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

104

14:57

Pagina 104

GEORGE V. COYNE, S.J.

and dust had to form into a disk by the law of physics to conserve angular momentum. Once all of this mass is concentrated into a disk, there is a much greater chance that the particles of gas and dust will collide and, in some cases, stick together. And, just like the rolling snowball effect, planetesimals, about 100 kilometers in diameter, are built up through accretion and finally planets are accreted from the planetesimals. We do not know everything about this process, but we know enough about it to know that it did not happen by a miracle. It happened by ordinary physical and chemical processes. So, a further question arises: Did what we have just described happen elsewhere? First of all we look at those nearby stars that we suspect may be something like the sun. We have detected thus far more than 100 planets about other stars due to the center of mass motion of the star. That is an indirect way but a very solid one of detecting planets. We detect a wobble in the star due to the fact that there is mass outside of it so that the center of mass of the system is not at the geometrical center of the star. Furthermore, with the Hubble Space Telescope we have discovered disks around very young stars. We know for certain that they are very young stars by their spectra. We call the disks proto planetary because we have indirect evidence that the first planets have begun to form in the inner regions of the disk. We are beginning to see about other stars the process that we think formed the planets about the sun. Since we have the capacity to put the universe in our heads, a further question comes to us. Where did galaxies come from? Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. Hubble Space Telescope has been able to photograph some of the most distant objects we have ever seen in the universe. They are at a distance of about ten billion light years from us. So we are seeing these objects as they were ten billion years ago. We think that Hubble is seeing proto galaxies. We see, for instance, a case of two blobs which seem to be merging and perhaps building up a galaxy. However, this is very controversial. We are uncertain about galaxy formation, whether it is bottom up with small units that build into a galaxy, or top down with a big cloud that collapses to form a galaxy, and then the stars form within it. Nevertheless, when we compare distant galaxies to nearby galaxies, we see clear differences in the stellar populations. Galaxies as they are born and age go through an evolutionary process. Galaxies are participating in the expansion of the universe. When we look at them on a large scale we see that they are not distributed homogeneously. There are large empty spaces and many dense alignments.

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 105

MODERN COSMOLOGY AND LIFE’S MEANING

105

Origins of Intelligent Life How did we humans come to be in this evolving universe? It is quite clear that we do not know everything about this process. But it would be scientifically absurd to deny that the human brain is a result of a process of chemical complexification in an evolving universe. After the universe became rich in certain basic chemicals, those chemicals got together in successive steps to make ever more complex molecules. Finally in some extraordinary chemical process the human brain came to be, the most complicated machine that we know. I should make it clear that, when I speak about the human brain as a machine, I am not excluding the spiritual dimension of the human being. I am simply prescinding from it and talking about the human brain as a biological, chemical mechanism, evolving out of the universe. Did this happen by chance or by necessity in this evolving universe? The first thing to be said is that the problem is not formulated correctly. It is not just a question of chance or necessity because, first of all, it is both. Furthermore, there is a third element here that is very important. It is what I call ‘opportunity’. What this means is that the universe is so prolific in offering the opportunity for the success of both chance and necessary processes that such a character of the universe must be included in the discussion. The universe is 15 billion years old, it contains about 100 billion galaxies each of which contains 100 billion stars of an immense variety. We might illustrate what opportunity means in the following way. Einstein said that God does not play at dice. He was referring specifically to quantum mechanics, but it can be applied in general to his view of the universe. For him God made a universe to work according to established laws. This is referred to as a Newtonian Universe. It is like a clock that just keeps ticking away once you supply it energy. Today we might be permitted to challenge this point of view. We could claim that God does play at dice because he is certain to win. The point being made is that God made a universe that is so prolific with the possibilities for these processes to have success that we have to take the nature of the universe into consideration when we talk about how we came to be. For 15 billion years the universe has been playing at the lottery. What do I mean by the lottery? When we speak about chance we mean that it is very unlikely that a certain event would happen. The ‘very unlikely’ can be calculated in mathematical terms. Such a calculation takes into account how big the universe is, how many stars there are, how many stars would

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

106

Pagina 106

GEORGE V. COYNE, S.J.

have developed planets, etc. In other words, it is not just guesswork. There is a foundation in fact for making each successive calculation. A good example of a chance event would be two very simple molecules wandering about in the universe. They happen to meet one another and, when they do, they would love to make a more complex molecule because that is the nature of these molecules. But the temperature and pressure conditions are such that the chemical bonding to make a more complex molecule cannot happen. So they wander off, but they or identical molecules meet billions and billions of times, trillions if you wish, in this universe, and finally they meet and the temperature and pressure conditions are correct. This could happen more easily around certain types of stars than other types of stars, so we can throw in all kinds of other factors. The point is that from a strictly mathematical analysis of this, called the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics, one can say that as this process goes on and more complex molecules develop, there is more and more direction to this process. As the complexity increases, the future complexity becomes more and more predetermined. In such ways did the human brain come to be and it is still evolving. Summary It makes us dizzy to contemplate billions of years in the evolving universe and then to think that we are on a little planet orbiting a quite normal star, one of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is just one galaxy and not anything special among the billions of galaxies which populate the visible universe. Cosmology today is ever more human; it stimulates, provokes, questions us in ways that drive us beyond science in the search for satisfaction, while at the same time scientific data furnish the stimuli. In this context the best cosmology, to its great merit, does not pretend nor presume to have the ultimate answers. It simply suggests and urges us on, well aware that not all is within its ken. Freedom to seek understanding and not dogmatism in what is understood characterize the best of cosmology. It is, in fact, a field where certainties lie always in the future; thus it is vital, dynamic and very demanding of those who seek to discover the secrets of the universe.

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 107

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY COYNE

RAO: Professor Coyne, I don’t think that the neural networks, or whatever those networks are, generate heat, as is the case in large integrated circuits. I do not know about thermal energy and the way it is released. Are you sure the situation is like that: as you increase the surface area you would expect heat to be generated? I just wonder, because it is important to know whether heat is generated because of our neural network functioning. I am not sure that this is known. SINGER: The cooling problem is not the central problem of brain science. There is a very efficient way to cool down the brain by blood circulation, and there are much bigger brains than our brains, such as the elephant brain or the whale brain. What seems to limit brains ultimately is that the conduction time of the nerve fibre is finite and if you want to establish coherence in time you cannot go too far, otherwise you lose coherence, but there may be other reasons as well. MURADIAN: I have a small, but I think important, remark about life in the universe, about the transformation of inorganic matter into organic matter. Let us suppose that the rate of the transformation, of the augmentation of humanity, human mass, is 1% per year, and that over the past five thousand years the mass of the earth has become a mass of humans. This is a historical time, not a cosmological time. Over these five thousand years all the mass of the universe will transform into organic or human mass. It seems that the arithmetic here is very simple. There is no doubt: it is Malthusian arithmetic. And what do you think will prevent such a catastrophe? The meaning of life is the transformation of inorganic matter into organic form, and we see that this transformation occurs in a very short time-scale. Is there a contradiction from the point of view of religion or science to this? COYNE: If I have understood, I do not see any contradiction. Religion has nothing to say to the transformations to which you refer. From our sci-

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

108

14:57

Pagina 108

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY COYNE

entific knowledge we know that there is a constant replenishment of inorganic materials to the universe through the process of stellar evolution. But, in my paper I did not address the percentage of living matter in the total matter of the universe. It must be very small. I assume, for instance, that life could not exist in, or even near, black holes of which the universe is abundant. Actually, I referred in my paper only to the distribution of living matter on the Earth, 98% in plants, 2% in animals. LÉNA: Yes, this is more a comment than a question, and it’s about strategies to look for life in the universe. You mentioned the SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with radio signals, which is one approach. This is a top to bottom approach: we search for the most elaborate forms of life that we know about through the detection of intelligent signals. Now, the other method is of course bottom up, namely looking for signs of life which are vegetation, for instance, or any other sign such as the presence of ozone around the terrestrial planet which in our view is related to organic chemistry and life production because of the balance of thermodynamic equilibrium. Now, both approaches are extremely interesting. The first one is a somewhat fishing approach, I mean, either you succeed, and you get a signal, or you get nothing and you know nothing. The other one seems to me more scientific in the sense that it can go gradually, you get an image and this is within reach. We know that, ten or fifteen years from now we will have images of the surface of planets such as the earth at distances of a few light-years, and then we can look on those for signs of changing vegetation with time, which is perhaps not as conclusive as the first approach, but it is less of a fishing approach. I think one has to have both. I suppose you agree with that point. COYNE: Yes, I agree. I agree completely that there are two ways of doing this. The limitation today is that looking out from the Sun, there are only a few solar-like stars within a few thousand light years of the Sun. To look all the way across our galaxy is going to take two hundred thousand light years to send the signal and receive it back so the chances, if you put all the well-known statistics on the distribution of stars, the chances of getting an intelligent signal are minimal. But the point is, it’s a less scientific way to do it, but it would be an immense achievement if we received what could really be interpreted as an intelligent signal. There are all kinds of implications. I agree absolutely. Our observing technology is improving all the time. In the past decade

7.Coyne

18-07-2003

14:57

Pagina 109

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY COYNE

109

we have discovered more than one hundred planets about other stars. We have also discovered planetary systems. Furthermore, we have discovered disks of matter about extra-solar stars which are very much like the disk of material about the Sun out of which our planetary system was formed. We are developing techniques to sample the chemical composition of extra-solar planets in an attempt to detect such constituents as oxygen, ozone, nitrogen, etc., possible signatures of life. SINGER: I think I have to cut the discussion here. We could go on for long, talking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and the limits of the universe and why we apply a Cartesian system in order to describe something which is probably not Cartesian, and so forth.

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 110

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE: THE CONSIDERATIONS OF A DEMOGRAPHER BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

1. I am sorry, I am not familiar with cultural anthropology and I am afraid that something in my speech will sound amateurish. May I hope that, at least, my mistakes will not be too bad. As a way out, I will try to consider culture in the largest sense: including knowledge, customs and beliefs, ways of living, of expression and communication, going from legislation to stories and art, from books to databases and tools, and so on. In my opinion, in shaping a culture the level and content of knowledge comes first. But immediately, connected with it, and through evaluation of it, come decisions and behaviour. Behaviour means choices, and these imply free will and a certain amount of freedom. And it is linked to a strain towards targets. This is obtained at the level of each individual person, with ensuing heterogeneity of subjects. Within a population, culture may be differently characterized by groups of people in some way connected and providing evidence of homogeneity under some aspects. By families, first of all. I think it has happened to each one of us to be uncertain on the phone whether we were speaking with the mother or the daughter, so indistinguishable was the tone of the answer and of the voice. And we have evidence of a sort of family lexicon. To be crude, blasphemy seems to belong to a family lexicon, transmitted through the male line. The relation between the level of education of the mother and the success of children at school has been repeatedly emphasized. And so on. More usual is to associate the idea of a culture with that of a population by and large sharing it. But culture has many facets, and subgroups in a society are identified by particular features characterizing them. Divisions by town and country, level of education, employment status,

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 111

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

111

etc., within a society are usual covariates considered in studies of differential demography. Certain characteristics qualify both subgroups within a country and populations across countries: language, race, religion are among them. They are factors of distinction as well as cohesion. I remember well what I heard in 1994, at the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. A Muslim delegate of an intergovernmental organization was on stage at a plenary session, and I heard him proudly declare: ‘We are a billion and a half; in ten years we will be two billion’. A distinction in one of these characteristics is generally associated with divergences along other lines: from a demographic point of view, in behaviour in front of events and decisions concerning human life. But not necessarily everywhere in the same manner. Characterizing elements like those just mentioned are enduring factors shaping a cultural trait. An Italian colleague had made an in-depth study of the history of fertility in Spain. He happened to show the results to a Spanish colleague. This colleague, expert in the history of the country, was astonished and explained that the obtained map of fertility levels by regions reproduced political divisions dating back to past centuries. May I mention a similar coincidence observed in another demographic field. I knew that Cameroon was, in Africa and in the world, the country with the highest rate of sterility. I happened to find a study mapping finely determined African regions with high sterility levels, with particular attention to Cameroon. This map allowed the identification of the trails followed by raids into the various zones. Not only did the slavers spoil indigenous populations of human capital, they also left behind as an added offence a diffusion of sexually transmitted diseases. 2. The influence of cultural traits on behaviour modelling demographic phenomena can be traced back to well before the heavy impact of modern science and technology. May I mention three examples. In Europe, where the relevant documentation exists and can be exploited, seasonal trends of births have been ascertained. For a long time in the past, higher rates appeared to be reached in late winter and early spring, lower in autumn and early winter. The reverse was documented for some regions of the Southern hemisphere. This phenomenon was seen at every latitude. At the same latitude, instead, birth seasonality differed, at least somewhere, between town and country. Such observations led someone to hypothesize a behaviour, in the countryside, consistent with the intent of having available all human resources just in time for when work in agriculture most needed them.

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

112

14:58

Pagina 112

BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

On the other hand, man had proved unable to manage adequately the struggle against sickness in the case of large epidemics. Empirical observations during plague episodes had consistently taught the lesson of the risk of contagion. Therefore, when a notice came of an instance of infection in some place, the borders of a town were rapidly sealed, and the entrance of persons or products was admitted only under strict conditions. This terribly damaged the local economy, but was felt necessary. Moreover, diseased persons were isolated in ad hoc institutions, and their homes were closed and disinfected. Those populations did not know what science later found about invisible beings and rats and fleas carrying them around. These defeated guards at the entrances and interventions on isolated buildings. Finally, following John Hajnal, imagine on a map a line going from St. Petersburg to Trieste dividing Europe into two parts. In the Western part, the age at marriage for both sexes and the percentage of population that never married at all had been for centuries, since the end of the Middle Ages up to that of the ancien régime, much higher than in the Eastern one. In a prevailingly rural economy, availability of exploitable land and laws of inheritance are supposed to have been major factors in shaping behaviour. This – by the way – allowed to rely on the valve of flexible nuptiality habits to repair the ravages of plague crises. 3. In any field a time lag appears between a new scientific or technological finding and the taking advantage of it by interested people for their specific purposes. First of all, in scientific work itself. In my field, for instance, it was noticed that a leading journal of biostatistics hosted a paper making reference to Mendel’s theory only in the late 20s. Locally, the attention to heredity centred around different aspects and approaches. Biases of schools were at work. In 1954, at the UN World Population Conference in Rome, a participant coming from Eastern Europe presented a paper about changes in population characteristics due to marriages and migratory movements. He stated that these changes were due to economic, social and political factors, not to genes: ‘Simply because genes do not exist. They are a myth’. Coming to an area in which I am personally involved, I mention the new horizons opened by the computer. I was born too soon. I am not referring to my age, but to the circumstance that my classical preparation in statistics was done before the birth of the personal computer. The PC allowed new chapters in statistical methodology and in computational statistics to be opened. May I mention an exercise performed by a colleague with the students attending his lec-

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 113

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

113

tures in statistics. A double set of issues of leading journals, one some thirty years old and one of the most recent years, was scanned. It was found that in statistical applications in the oldest journals about 10% of the papers appeared to use a Bayesian approach. At that time there was a great controversy between those accustomed to classical approaches and those relying on Bayesian procedures. In recent years said rate increased to 50%. Personally – owing to heavy engagements in activities outside research and teaching – I did not find time to catch up with developments in the two fields. My efforts proved sufficient to understand the substance and the limits of these developments. But I realize that, when I want to follow new lines of research opened by continuously updated techniques, I need collaboration. Computers have shown possibilities and created problems also in other areas. I am referring to the so-called data mining. It consists in techniques of analizing data when they come in enormous amounts: contacts through cellphones, visits to websites, databases of administrative acts, etc. In a recent meeting I heard a speaker raising questions about the philosophy of the approach to an analysis of data. He praised, through those methods, the greater respect of real facts. The classical approach through models was thought to impose an unwarranted theoretical pattern to an unknown matter. Considering again computers, they provide an example of advancement of science and technology in one area, computing, that generates questions to be solved in a quite different one. The software that makes the computer work is a typical example of an intangible good. How can it be evaluated and treated in national accounting and matrices? At the level of the cost of licences? But the same good can generate quite different values of outcomes with a change in applications. And what about when it arrives free of charge, as it happens with Linux or the functions and scripts of the R project? Great attention has started to be given in economic accounts to this kind of goods: like tourism, terribly damaged by a horrible event. 4. The last example shows how an innovation in one field might induce unintended consequences in another one. This reminds me of a debate made in this room less than four years ago. Some participants raised objections against the spread of genetically modified products in agriculture fearing that this could mean favouring a dominant corporate food system based on large farms and monocultures. To that were opposed the merits of a system of small farms, more productive on the whole, and ‘multi-functional’, acting also as a basis of a diffused culture and of political equilibri-

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

114

14:58

Pagina 114

BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

um. I certainly do not want to enter into this discussion, but I wish to underline one aspect of this ‘multi-function’ of an agricultural enterprise. I recall a statement made about half a century ago by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a top Indian statistician: ‘If you want to lower the birth rate in India – he said – you have to foster improvements in agricultural activities’. The idea was, I think, that rationalization in one important aspect of human life such as labour could favour rationalization in another important one such as reproductive behaviour. This leads me to underline the links existing also between different components of demographic developments. They are strong, lasting and pervasive, so that a disturbance in one of them entails consequences in others. May I illustrate this point through an example. Fig. 1 shows the relation, over an interval of about 40 years, between the sex ratio (surviving males over females) and age in 1970 in the populations of three countries: the United States, the German Federal Republic, the German Democratic Republic. In the population of the United States one notices the usual descending trend of the ratio with increasing age due to the higher mortality of males. In both German Republics in two distinct intervals a roughly constant level with advancing age is put in evidence. The second one, at the oldest ages, depends on outcomes of the First World War. The previous one, of the Second. In this last, the difference in the level of the ratio in the two German populations is due to selective migration from East to West in the postwar period before the building of the wall. These persisting imbalances in populations which at the end of the war were between, say, 20 and 40 years of age must have created constraints to nuptiality, thus lowering the birthrate. With it will change the rate of population increase, the age structure, the death rate. What I want to underline is that demographic developments may be characterized by a slow pace, but they are relentless. And I do not mention, now, the interaction with induced social and cultural changes and their feedback on the causing factors. 5. But let us now concentrate on the extraordinary social phenomenon named demographic transition by Frank Notestein and révolution démographique by Adolphe Landry. That is, the passage from a practically stationary population characterized by high birth and death rates to a similar situation in which both rates are low. This change was completed in the Western world in roughly one century and a half. Due to the more rapid decline in fertility, the size of the population in the countries of the region increased very much. I will avoid the boredom of figures and will not enter

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 115

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

115

100

M —% F 90

United States 80

Germany F.R. 70

60

Germany D.R.

50

0 50 (1920)

60 (1910)

70 (1900)

80 (1890)

Age (Year of birth)

Fig. 1. Sex ratio by age, 1970.

into the debate on factors responsible for the decline of mortality. I will only mention a few of the several explanations advanced about the descending trend of fertility. Besides decreasing mortality, industrialization, education, urbanization, secularization, and so on have been underlined. But no generalization can be done. For each supposed causal factor, marked exceptions exist. Industrialization started first in England, well in advance of any important fertility decline. Compulsory schooling was adopted in Germany much before any perceptible shrinking of the birthrate. According to Ronald Freedman, the postwar baby boom disproved for the States the hypothesis on secularization.

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

116

14:58

Pagina 116

BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

Before the beginning of the change a limitation of births existed already in restricted circles: among members of the nobility and, in Italy, in some Jewish communities. The spreading of this behaviour within the general population definitely preceded any important contraction in mortality. It happened in the countryside, northwest of Paris, in France, decades before the revolution. It has been suggested that this local behaviour may have been responsive to the supply of land. But it can be observed that France did not feel the need to take advantage of migration to the open territories of the New World. A French Canadian historical demography expert complained that in actual fact there had been a minimal flow of migrants from France to North America over a century and a half. French people, who were the first to settle on the St. Lawrence bay and the Mississipi delta, missed the opportunity to link the two original communities through facilities of rivers and lakes, giving by that another turn to historical developments. Throughout the nineteenth century fertility continued to decline in France more than anywhere else in Europe. Bertillon in 1895, seeing that the births in his country were half of the German ones, was frightened. He stated that he expected the outbreak of a war twenty years later. I have mentioned these opinions in order to stress the importance of possible outcomes of demographic behaviour. But I immediately want to call attention to two basic points. In France, and anywhere else in Western Europe, the transition was not the consequence of any direct intervention of public authorities. It depended on decisions taken at the level of individual families. And this transition came to an end well before the discovery of the pill or of any other medical contraceptive. At the time of the world crisis of 1929-31, fertility in some countries had fallen down to about replacement level. The old valve of nuptiality was already exhausted. The change was due to traditional methods, coitus interruptus, abstinence, some rough condoms, and the like. And to induced abortion, presumably. I have never met reliable evaluations about its impact in past times. Folk methods may have been used, but I think that it is fair to suppose that it was a risky enterprise, apart from legal sanctions. Given these facts, one might rightly ask which is the role played by advances in science. Before trying to give an answer to this question, let us glance briefly at what has been happening since the last war in developing countries. 6. From Jenner, to Koch and Pasteur, and to Fleming, to mention only some symbolic names, the art of medicine in a century and a half has

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 117

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

117

made extraordinary progress in every field, in prevention, diagnosis and therapy. Its great results were supported by improvements in living standards and in the organization of the public health system. All that scientific and technical knowledge was potentially available to any country at the end of the last world war. The enlarged possibilities of contacts with the developed world made possible in underprivileged regions the acquisition and spreading of knowledge, practices and products which had taken a long time to accumulate. But their application met with formidable obstacles. I do remember that I noticed, in a statistic of the WHO, that in a country there was a physician for every sixty thousand people. And I do not mention conditions of hygiene and undernutrition. In spite of such severe limitations, the decline of mortality in the developing world has gone on much more rapidly than in the past in the more advanced regions. Certainly, a good deal more is needed to reach the levels obtained elsewhere, but the road is open, though with added hindrances. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS epidemics have caused the waste of much of the gains. But improved economic conditions, advances in educational resources and rearrangements in social organization will presumably allow the levels of control now prevailing in more affluent regions to be reached. The better control of sickness and the lowering mortality meant enormous savings and advantages. For instance, it reduced the wastage of economic resources spent on bringing up babies who did not reach maturity. This fact increased human resources available in better health in productive lifetime. At the same time, it created conditions favourable to an increase in the already high fertility. More people survived to reproductive age, and were kept in good health through it. People then realized that it was no longer necessary to procreate many children to have a reasonable number of surviving ones at older ages. The contraction of the birth rate was the appropriate response to the new conditions. At first, natality remained high, so that the rate of growth of the population steadily increased up to a level never reached in the past by any population. Later on, the fall in mortality was followed by a similar drastic drop in the birthrate. The main instruments used in this decline were no longer the traditional ones. New tools came to the forefront, all depending on new knowledge, products and abilities: pills, IUD, injectables, sterilization, in some cases induced abortion. Pressure from governments, in a variety of forms – even compulsory in some places – coupled with international urging have been moving rapidly in that direction. These external actions met

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

118

14:58

Pagina 118

BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

with developments on the demand side of families facing new situations. But one point must be underlined. The fight against diseases and for survival is one-sided, and this simplifies choices and behaviour and makes it easier to foresee future developments. Procreation is a much more problematic area. Competing values and interests, at the level of involved couples, changing in time and meeting variable conditioning factors, led to heterogeneous behaviours, whose outcomes cannot be easily forecasted. 7. The last observation concerning uncertainties in evaluating facts and their developments in the demographic field has to be kept in mind when coming to an in-depth consideration about the timing of the adjustment of a cultural background. To this can be added that some events and realities are still puzzling and escape explanations. Take the sex ratio at birth – this pivot of our biological and social life – and its systematic variations between selected groups of newborns. After hundreds of proposed hypotheses, we might use an expression of Francis Bacon: ‘What was a question once is a question still’. To take another example, it is hard to find the factors which determined the rise of the birthrate during the last war through 1945. From the States to Australia and New Zealand, through France and England and Wales, this happened in countries involved in the conflict and also in some – like Sweden and Switzerland – who were neutral but near the area of operations. And no demographer foresaw the baby boom up to the peak of 1960 in the States and of 1964 in Western Europe. Dissection of a social phenomenon in an effort to identify clearly responsible factors is a difficult exercise, always in danger of falling in the fallacy of spurious correlations or of post hoc ergo propter hoc sequences. We have seen that success in controlling mortality imposed as an unintended consequence a parallel containment of births. This happened, at different paces, in developed and developing regions. On the whole, as I have already had the opportunity to underline, mankind is now compelled to give up much of its potential fertility. The decline in mortality is in the forefront everywhere. Products, gadgets and techniques for checking fecundability play in general a minor role, simply more or less facilitating the itinerary towards a needed target. The variety of choices among societies and individuals reflect both cultural heterogeneity and consequences of external pressures on the supply side. Both take time in the expression of their weight. 8. In order to better clarify this question of timing in social adjustments, I choose a case study. For several years Italian fertility has been well below

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 119

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

119

replacement level. With 1.2 children per woman it is now at the lowest level in the world. It is well below replacement level. It is only about two thirds of that prevailing in France. What can be an explanation of such a difference? In French society, the negative experiences of the past may have caused a sort of revirement in the general attitude. A new mood that, after the First World War and the great economic crisis, led to the approval in 1939 of the Code de la famille of the Front Populaire. This code included much more weighty measures in favour of families than those provided at about the same time in Italy. The demographic policy of the Fascist regime was very vociferous but substantially weak. I leave apart, naturally, the insults of antisemitism and the arrogant inconsistency of wanting at the same time more people and more space to lodge them. In recent decades in my country the baby boom has left space for a downward trend, in marriages first, and then in marital and general fertility. With the said 1.2 children per woman, we are far from the two children considered to be ideal for a family in answers given in several representative sample surveys. In my opinion this is a signal of social illness. Some twenty years ago I had the opportunity to ascertain that, in France, public finance spent fifteen times more on family allowances than Italy. At that time, a French colleague found it strange that what in his country was considered social policy, in mine had the smell of fascist policy. Italian politicians were on the same line and did not care much about what was happening. And what was happening – and still continues to prevail – was of the utmost importance for the life of the Italian population. Such a containment of births has had a strong impact on its age structure. The shrinking of the basis of the age pyramid will entail heavy population ageing. Italy, with Japan, already now, shows the fastest rate of ageing of the world. This situation has consequences in many fields. In economic life, first. There is an increasing shortage of young adults in the labour force, that is of the more flexible and creative workers. In numbers, it is estimated that, to keep stable the proportion of the population in productive ages, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are needed every year. Sadly, while in the more industrialized regions of the North managers long for availability of labour force, in the South there continues to be severe unemployment, especially among young people. Persisting cultural resistances create obstacles to a better internal balance. Provisions in the field of welfare also require a drastic rearrangement of activities and expenses. Some waste of resources is expected. Empty

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

120

14:58

Pagina 120

BERNARDO M. COLOMBO

school buildings can be restructured for other services, but past spending to prepare teachers who are now out of work are lost. And it is probably not simple to convert a paediatrician into an expert of geriatrics. Certainly those who survive, say, at 65 years of age are nowadays on the average in better health than ever in the past. This makes it reasonable to postpone the age of retirement. However this solution plays against the prospects for the career of young people. There arises an intergenerational conflict of interests for which there are no easy solutions. The most rapidly expanding segment of the population is that of the oldest old, say of people beyond 80. Among them, there is the highest proportion of persons who are not autonomous and self-sufficient: a proportion which is definitely higher, furthermore, among the poorest social classes. Most of the ensuing problems of help and assistance are now left in the hands and on the shoulders of families. This imposed onus is at the origin of much suffering especially for underprivileged units. This is a specific aspect of a more general problem. In fact, besides biological ageing, there is a social ageing ending in isolation and exclusion. Old people have lost much of their value as depositories of experiences and transmitters of knowledge. Their worst expectation is to live in solitude. In Italy, the fraction of aged persons cared for in institutions is lower than in other similar societies. One may impute this deficiency to a lack of wisdom of politicians who failed to understand what was going on and came slowly and late to proper action. It is normal for politicians to look for immediately visible results of their intervention on today’s problems. But a sense of solitude may be felt also in institutions. And most of the problems arising from isolation in a society are in the hands and under the responsibility of the behaviour of the people themselves. The contraction in the number of births impoverishes vertical family links – between children and parents and grandparents – which could provide better company and help for the aged. At the same time it offers less opportunity to enjoy horizontal ones through relatives, who are few in numbers, and live in similar conditions. Other solutions have to be looked for to support and enrich the extended period of life, but the cultural accommodation of the society to the new conditions created by science and technology is going on only at a very slow pace. The inertia inherent in demographic movements facilitates forecasting future developments which society has to be prepared to meet. An urgent task, in my country, stimulating much attention and research.

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 121

THE DIFFERENT PACES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

121

9. In recent times, in several developing countries there has been both a decline in mortality and a drastic substantial drop in the birth rate. The considerations suggested by our case study might guide someone in imagining scenarios that could be happening in any of them. The experience in one instance certainly cannot simply be transferred, as it was realized, to another one. But the exercise could prove useful in illuminating the road of governance and of people. Failures might be unforgiving.

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 122

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY COLOMBO

PAVAN: I would like you to tell us what you expect to have with the demographic stabilisation that will come in no more than fifty years, and how the thing will be solved, all these problems you are putting together now. And I would say that when you talk to young people and use a phrase of Dr. de Duve, ‘your future is in your hands’, I would say to young people, our future is in your hands. I would like to know what you think about this, what will happen with demografic stabilisation. COLOMBO: I think that I underlined a disequilibrium. In demographic stabilisation there is a sort of equilibrium, and this will not be true in fifty years: in ten years or so there will be an almost stabilised situation. Certainly we wrongly mix the case of China, with its compulsory onechild family, with the cases of other countries which still have a high rate of increase. But I think the situation in Italy has not yet stabilised. In the future the population will stabilise. PAVAN: Yes: but do you think that the problem will be solved by education of people or by medicine or other factors? COLOMBO: I certainly think it is a problem of education, of personal education, of how to deal with their own problems. PAVAN: Then we have to do a lot to achieve that. COLOMBO: I think so. RAO: I am glad that you ended up with education. I just want to bring some balance to this by referring to what is happening in most of the developing countries. In most developing countries, including India, the population is increasing among the very poor people. In fact, the poorest

8.Colombo

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 123

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY COLOMBO

123

of the poor have very large families – they cannot afford that. Most of the children have to work to maintain the family. It is the rich, the educated, who have family planning, who have one or two children. So thus begins another imbalance, economic and otherwise. There are countries that find it difficult to maintain and support such people. At the same time, education is very important for the disadvantaged. It is a very serious problem in developing countries. COLOMBO: May I give an answer? I quote what Professor Mahalanobis said, he was a top statistician, an Indian. He said: ‘If you want to lower fertility in India you have to foster improvements in agriculture’, probably because he thought that rationalisation in one important aspect of life, labour, could be transferred to rationalisation in another important aspect, procreation. It is a problem of education. IACCARINO: Yes, only a question of terminology. You used the term ‘fertility’, whereas in other circles, such as UN circles, they use the term ‘birthrate’. Did you use the term ‘fertility’ intentionally? Is it common among demographers? COLOMBO: The word ‘fecundity’ is common among Italian demographers. It is translated from the French, not fertility. I changed the word to avoid boredom, but it is the same thing.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 124

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK STANLEY L. JAKI

There are world views from which it is not possible to go to science. Such a world view is the one in which the many bubbles on the perspiring body of Brahma represent so many worlds that pop up randomly and in an infinite number through infinite space and time. I would not, however, be surprised if some scientists would take this world view for an anticipation of the multiverse theory, which in recent years has received the attention of leading newspapers. The latest case is the Tuesday, October 29, 2002 issue of The New York Times, where the headline of the Science Section declares: ‘A New View of Our Universe: Only One of Many’. My reason for not being surprised is that the millions of years of world cycles as set forth in the Vedantas have repeatedly been taken as an anticipation of the vast phases of cosmic processes implied either in the Big Bang or in a cyclic cosmological model, such as that of an oscillating universe. The article quoted many prominent astronomers in support of that idea of an infinite number of universes, but none of them cared to recall what Eddington succinctly stated in 1935: ‘That queer quantity “infinity” is the very mischief, and no rational physicist should have anything to do with it’.1 This statement is valid regardless of whether it comes from a great scientist or not. Infinity cannot be measured. Its introduction into science has always meant catastrophes. Unfortunately, a hundred years after Planck’s great feat in 1900, its true significance is still to sink into broader scientific consciousness. With his feat Planck undermined the notion of physical infinity, although Planck himself failed to realize this, when he applied

1

A.S. Eddington, New Pathways in Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), p. 217.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 125

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

125

finite series to account for the shape of black body radiation.2 For as long as one tries to explain that shape with infinitesimal calculus, and not with the summation of discreet entities, there looms large what is called the infinity catastrophe in the ultraviolet region of black body radiation. Another ancient world view from which it was impossible to advance to science was the combination of Confucian and Taoist world views. Joseph Needham of Cambridge offered a hollow rhetoric when he claimed that in ancient China the Taoists tried to move from a view of the world represented by a human body, to what Needham called the suppleness of the world lines of General Relativity.3 Lately one of the most prominent experts of American constitutional law claimed that General Relativity justifies a supple interpretation of the laws, and indeed of any law. In plain language he meant to say, that one can twist and turn the law, provided one does it with sophistication. Such is the case whenever a non-scientist wraps his claims in profuse references to science, about which most in his audience know next to nothing. The legal expert was Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard, who got a BS degree in physics before he entered Law School.4 But I wonder whether a mere bachelor’s degree in physics makes one an expert in General Relativity, which, incidentally, is the most rigid physical theory ever proposed. As Einstein himself warned, if only one of its predictions were to be contradicted by experiment, the whole theory would have to be abandoned.5 In fact, any good physical theory is subject to this fate. Newton himself warned that if the orbits of the planets were not found to be re-entrant, his physics should be entirely recast. So much for some ancient world views that imply infinity or endless cycles for the universe. Still another ancient world view, from which there was no advancing to science, was that of the ancient Egyptians. They viewed the world as the

2 See my essay, ‘Numbers Decide: or Planck’s Constant and Some Constants of Philosophy’, in J. Gonzalo (ed.), Planck’s Constant 1900-2000: An Academic Session at UAM, April 11, 2000 (Madrid. UEA Ediciones, 2000), pp. 108-134. 3 In his Science and Civilization in Ancient China (Cambridge: University Press, 1954-), vol. II, pp. 146-51 and 425-29. 4 See my article, ‘Patterns versus Principles: The Pseudo-scientific Roots of Law’s Debacle’, Notre Dame Law Review (Fall 1993), pp. 135-57. Reprinted in my Patterns or Principles and Other Essays (Bryn Mawr MD: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995), pp. 1-25. 5 Einstein stated this in a public lecture he gave in Prague in 1920. See H. Steuwert (ed.), Historical and Philosophical Perspectives of Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), p. 9.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

126

14:58

Pagina 126

STANLEY L. JAKI

combination of a horizontal male body, that of the deity Geb, which represents the earth, and, overarching it, the female body of the deity Nut, which represents the sky. A splendid picture of this is in the burial chambers of Rameses VI in the Valley of Kings. In this view the world is taken for a huge, all encompassing organism, a view dominating all ancient cultures and responsible in all of them for the invariable stillbirths of science. Stillbirths, because promising starts led to nowhere.6 Such starts were, for instance, the marvelous technological feats of the Egyptians of old in technology. But they could not generalize plain arithmetic skills into general propositions. Strange as this may seem, even the ancient Greeks are an illustration of this pattern of stillborn science. Ptolemaic astronomy, their scientifically best world, was not a world view at all. Apart from some phrases in its introduction, the Almagest of Ptolemy is a sheer geometrical formalism, which tells us nothing about the physical nature of the celestial sphere, of the stars and the planets, not even of the moon and of the earth, let alone of the force which moves all of them. There is some world view in Ptolemy’s Hypotyposes, where he presents the planets as living beings, as a group of well drilled dancers or soldiers. As such, so Ptolemy claims, the planets do not bump into one another in going through their intricate paths. Neither Ptolemy, nor anyone in Late Antiquity or even later tried to go from the fantasies of the Hypotyposes, let alone from the astrological vagaries of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, to the science of the Almagest, a science of sheer geometrical formalism, which tells us nothing about the nature of the physical world. The world view of the Hypotyposes harked back to the organismic world view which, after it had been proposed by Socrates in the Phaedo, reappeared briefly in the third part of Plato’s Timaeus. The full working out of that world view, in which the world, at least in its sublunary part, is a huge digestive living organism, had to wait for Aristotle, who provided it in his De Coelo and Meteorologica. Within that world view everything under the moon’s orb moves to achieve what is best for it, and the larger the mass or nature of a given body, the greater desire it has to move towards its natural place. From this it would follow that a mass a hundred times larger than another, would fall a hundred times faster and would reach the ground from the same height in a hundred times shorter time.

6 For a detailed exposition of this view, see my Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974), chs. 1-6, that deal with six great ancient cultures.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 127

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

127

Aristotle or the Aristotelians never drew that conclusion, for a reason which cannot really be fathomed. Perhaps it was an intellectual torpor on their part, or perhaps they recoiled from facing an obvious fallacy, which anyone could have exposed by standing on a chair, or on the edge of a roof. In all late Antiquity only Joannes Philoponus spoke up against the nonsensical nature of that Aristotelian law, but without referring to any experiment or citing any quantitative data. Socrates chose that animistic view of the universe in reaction to the mechanistic world view of the Ionian physikoi. He read about that world view in a book to which Anaxagoras gave the title On the Mind. On reading it, Socrates first found that a mechanistic view seemed to explain everything, including the mind. But on reflection Socrates also found that it did not explain why beings such as humans, who had a mind, acted for a purpose, or for something which they thought was the best for them. Surely, Socrates argued, the mechanistic view did not explain why he had chosen not to accept the scheme of his friends, who bought off the jailkeeper so that Socrates might escape the hemlock waiting for him, although his limbs would have undoubtedly chosen to flee from prison. Galileo did not face up to these questions as he tried to demolish the Aristotelian world view. Nor could he do so in terms of his own world view, a combination of Platonism and atomism. From Platonism Galileo developed the absurd idea that man’s knowledge of quantities was as perfect as God’s notion of them. From atomism he derived the view that secondary qualities such as taste and colors were mere subjective experiences and therefore not real. It is not easy to trace the steps whereby the younger Galileo moved from the Aristotelian ideas of motion and mass toward a strictly geometrical formalism. Most likely he was at one point swayed by the power of numbers and geometrical figures in interpreting physical phenomena. The power itself has two aspects. One is the quantitative exactness, which only numbers have, the other is their full applicability wherever there are physical bodies. Strangely, Galileo nowhere refers to the passage in the Book of Wisdom, according to which ‘God disposed everything according to measure, number, and weight’. About that passage, E. Curtius, a Protestant historian of Medieval literature, stated half a century ago that it was the most often quoted biblical passage in that literature.7 The passage may show Platonic 7 E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, translated from the German by W.R. Trask (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), p. 504.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

128

14:58

Pagina 128

STANLEY L. JAKI

influences as that Book was composed in Alexandria about 150 BC. But as the Book of Wisdom has always been part of the Catholic Canon of inspired books, Catholics like Galileo surely had to take it seriously. To what extent they did is another matter. And this leads to that world view, which alone of all ancient world views came into a major interplay, indeed a conflict, with science. I mean the biblical world view. Within that view the world is merely a huge bedouin tent, with a floor, the earth, and a roof, the firmament. The sun, the moon, and the stars are mere decorations on that roof, the firmament, and the earth is a dish floating on waters which had no contours. Science could show no mercy to that world view. There are quite a few who gloat over the primitiveness of the biblical world view. The late Fred Hoyle used to dismiss that view as ‘the merest daub’ compared with the world view of modern science.8 Well, that world view was not even a daub when compared with the spherical world view of the Greeks. Hoyle, who died a few years ago, should have known something about our modern scientific world view, but apparently he did not want to recognize it. He held that life on earth originated from spores that were carried from some other parts of our galaxy to the earth. He should have known that our galaxy is for the most part terribly hostile to life and therefore hardly any of those spores could have survived even a part of that long journey. The book Rare Earth, published two years ago by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, both members of the National Academy of Science, is a massive presentation of the evidence that there is little scientific ground to speculate about life, let alone intellectual life, as popping up everywhere in our galaxy. Even weaker, if possible, are the chances for life in galaxies which, unlike our galaxy, a perfect spiral, have very irregular shapes. The world view within which life and intelligent life are ubiquitous in the universe has always been a dream, even though dressed up in science. And as it has been presented as science, it was demolished by science again and again.9 The interesting thing is that the latest phase in that demolition has been overlooked for decades, as no attention was paid to warnings less massive than that large book, about the inevitability of that demolition. But some people in science never give up, as they promote their philosophical 8

F. Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), p. 138. See A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). 9

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 129

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

129

or ideological world views with profuse references to science. The protagonists of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), who took part in our Plenary Meeting two years ago, have now begun to look for life which is not carbon based. Not only can they give no specifics about such a life, but they have recently hired an ‘exotheologian’.10 About a hundred and fifty years ago Moleschott and Vogt speculated about intelligent life based on phosphorus, but they stopped when it was found that the brains of geese were very rich in phosphorus. As is well known, in not a few languages geese are the epitome of stupidity. Ironically, the atomic number, 14, of silicon is just one less than that of phosphorus. So much for the more general parts of the enterprise which is to go from world views to science. There are some specific and more profound parts as well. Profound because they are philosophical, although in some other sense very elementary. About half a century ago Karl Popper made popular a by then very old truth, that all science is cosmology.11 This at least means that any decent scientific theory must lay a claim to universal validity, and no branch of science can be more universal in its intent than cosmology. Cosmology, scientific or other, begins with a view of the cosmos or the world, or to use the felicitous German word, with a Weltanschauung. Now to have a world we must have things, unless one is a radical Platonist or a solipsist, or an advocate of an extreme form of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to that interpretation, one’s mere thought is influencing one’s observation, and indeed creates things, and indeed universes. These brave thinkers have still to explain why one’s mere thought of a hundred dollar bill, or a bill of a hundred euros, does not produce one such entity. Tellingly those brave theorists have not yet approached with their ideas the World Bank, which certainly needs plenty of money. All knowledge of a thing begins with the registering of its existence. Things are objects whose purpose is to object to the mind. Any philosophical or scientific system which begins with ideas instead of things puts the cart before the horse. This is so because only by means of things can ideas be conveyed to others.12 This registering largely happens through siz-

10 See D. Overbye, ‘When it’s Not Enough to Say “Take Me to Your Leader” ’ , The New York Times, March 2, 2002, p. F1. 11 K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), p. 15. 12 A basic theme and recurring argument in my Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth (Grand Rapids. MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999).

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

130

14:58

Pagina 130

STANLEY L. JAKI

ing up the quantitative dimensions of a thing. Some people may be repelled by the fact that Aristotle had already pointed this out in his Categories (6b), but a truth may still be a truth even though proposed more than two thousand years ago. At any rate, in the same context Aristotle also stated that there is one category of words, those belonging to the category of quantities, about which the phrase ‘more or less’ cannot be predicated. These words are numbers. The number six cannot be more or less six. Numbers are rigid entities and they demand a rigid accounting. This was the reason why the biblical world view came into conflict with science and was demolished by it. The point failed to be appraised in its true significance by Bellarmine, the most insightful defender of that view against Galileo. Insightful because Bellarmine hedged his bet by referring to the possibility of an eventual demonstration of the earth’s motion. Two hundred and fifty years later Newman rallied to Bellarmine’s defense when he wrote, in 1877, a new and very long introduction to a re-edition of a book of his he had first published as an Anglican concerning the interpretation of the Bible.13 Believing as he did that the Bible stood for a divine revelation of utmost importance for man’s ultimate purpose, Newman argued that the Church, or rather the Holy Office, was right in urging Galileo to hold his guns until he had convincing arguments that the earth did indeed move. As is well known the first such convincing argument came only two hundred years after Galileo. But, I am afraid to say, Newman, a great student of logic and of Aristotle’s Categories, failed to consider a point, although Saint Augustine had already considered it. Augustine readily conceded that, contrary to the biblical view of a flat earth, science had conclusively shown that the earth was spherical.14 Augustine merely failed to say in some detail that what science showed about the earth was a set of measurements which are always quantitative. But Augustine made at least the general statement that if the human intellect established something convincingly about the physical world, the contrary statements of the Bible must be reinterpreted. There could only be one truth, Augustine argued, as long as God was one, and man was made in the image of God. But then Augustine came to the firmament, whose

13

J.H. Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1897), vol. 1, p. lvi. 14 He did so in his De Genesi ad litteram on which he worked for almost two decades. For a discussion, see my Genesis 1 through the Ages (2d rev. ed.; Royal Oak, Mich.: Real View Books, 1998), pp. 85-86.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 131

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

131

existence, so he felt, the Bible stated emphatically. He also seemed to know that there were, even in Ptolemaic astronomy, serious reasons against supposing that the sky was a solid roof, a firmament. Still he felt that the Bible was to be vindicated about the firmament, and so he looked for a firmament. He claimed to have found it in the path of Saturn. From Ptolemaic astrology, that is from the Tetrabiblos, Augustine took Saturn for a cold body, which as such, he reasoned, had to produce a vapory layer in its wake. This vapory layer Augustine called the firmament. Now Bellarmine and all the learned theologians he consulted, must have fully known of the futility of such an explanation. By its very futility it should have reminded them that great perils were in store if one took a stance on behalf of a proposition, say the immobility of the earth, which lent itself to quantitative determination. For against such a determination no authority, divine or human, could be invoked. All this should make it clear that the quantitative determinations of science have a decisive impact on the validity of any world view. But the reverse of this is also true. Quantitative determinations have no say about anything except the quantitative aspects of things, let alone about realities that go beyond things, such as questions of free will, purpose, and the registering of existence itself. The meaning of the verb is cannot be evaluated in terms of grams, or centimeters, of fluid ounces. It became a fashion to think that quantum mechanics justified speaking of free will. Eddington was one of the few, who within a year realized that the fashion was ‘a plain nonsense’.15 Just as pervasive has been the misconception that Darwinian evolution disposed of purpose. Well, if evolution is a purposeless process, why does it issue in beings, humans, who consciously can do nothing except for some purpose? And why is it that some evolutionists devote their whole life to the purpose of proving that there is no purpose?16 Of course, those who claim that God created every species and for a purpose, must show that such is indeed what the Bible states. As they take the phrase of Genesis 1, that God created all plants and animals ‘according to their kind’, to mean that He produced each kind with a special creation, they seem to forget that what is good for the gan-

15

See A.S. Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science (London: Macmillan, 1939), p. 128, for his repudiation of what he had stated in his The New Pathways of Science (Cambridge: University Press, 1935), p. 88. 16 He did so in his Vanuxem Lectures, The Function of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929), p. 12.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

132

14:58

Pagina 132

STANLEY L. JAKI

der is also good for the goose. If one takes one phrase of Genesis 1 for science, then all its other phrases can and should be taken for science. Then one comes up against the firmament, against light coming before the sun, against the sun’s coming at the same time as the moon and the stars, and against the coming of the plants before sunlight is on hand. There is plenty of good reason to assume that God did not want to land man in a series of patent absurdities. The consideration of these points should be a powerful motivation for looking at Genesis 1 not so much as a revealed world view, but rather as a view that merely illustrates some moral lesson along the Bible’s typical line. The lesson is conveyed in the form of a parable about the importance of observing the sabbath rest. The author of that chapter presents God as a role model for doing within six days a work, the making of all, a point which remains valid regardless of whether one proposes that all in terms of a cosmic bedouin tent or in terms of Copernican, Newtonian, or Einsteinian cosmology.17 So much about the coming from world views to science and from the merciless impact of science on them. What has been said should make it clear that science is particularly effective in demolishing world views. And this was a conspicuous feature of science as it came into its own, mostly through the work of Newton. Now something about the other question or whether it is possible to go from science to the world view which lay in the mind of the scientist as he began his scientific work. Let us take Newton. He certainly did not begin with a mechanistic world view, let alone with a mechanistic philosophy. There is nothing of that philosophy in the third book of the Principia, which is about the ‘System of the World’, that is, of the system of planets. Newton does not say in the Principia, or elsewhere, that the system in question is a clockwork. Twenty or so years later, when he began to increase the number of Queries attached to his Opticks, Newton spoke of various fluids, some of them quasi-spiritual effluvia, that may explain electrical attraction and repulsion. He never tried to give a mechanistic explanation of gravitation. The first such effort, in terms of differential pressure, came twenty years after Newton, through the speculations of George Le Sage.18 In sum, there is nothing in Newton to support what later became celebrated as a mechanistic philosophy, and was presented as Newton’s thought and as demon17 18

See my Genesis 1 through the Ages, pp. 274-79. See my The Relevance of Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 77.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 133

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

133

strated by Newton. This philosophy was largely the work of such amateurs in physics as Voltaire and others. Newton’s world view or philosophy had always been a strange mixture in which, in its early phase at least, the ideas of the Cambridge Neoplatonists were prominent. But one would try to do the impossible if one were to reconstruct Cambridge Neoplatonism from the Principia, or even from the Opticks, or reconstruct any consistent philosophy or world view from any or both of those works. The best parts of the Opticks were experimental and mathematical, and almost entirely mathematical was the Principia. This is why Newton called it Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, so that it may be distinguished from Descartes’ Principes de la philosophie, which was a heap of bad philosophy to support an even worse Cartesian science.19 It can never be pondered long and hard enough that the title of the Principia was a misnomer. There was no philosophy, no epistemology, no metaphysics in the Principia. There was not even nature, and certainly not the kind of nature which, as a living entity, is born, grows, dies, and experiences a rebirth, if it does at all. Had Faraday known more than elementary algebra, he could have found this out by reading the Principia, which he never read, and could have also found out that his philosophy of nature, full of vitalism, was a far cry from Newtonianism. But for all his vitalism, Faraday longed for mechanical models, and begged Maxwell to give him such models, which Maxwell found more and more improper to do, because he himself had to give up mechanical models as he developed his electromagnetic theory. Yet he stuck with his chief mechanical model, the ether. He calculated the resistivity of the ether, its coefficient of tension and the like. All those numerical data are in the article he wrote on the ether for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Such were some of the presuppositions of Heinrich Hertz, when after demonstrating the existence of electromagnetic waves, he decided to find out what, please note the word what, electromagnetism was. He did not ask how electromagnetism worked. He wanted to know what it was. And after years of reflection he felt he had no choice but to write: ‘Maxwell’s theory is Maxwell’s system of equations’.20 This meant that to take just the case of Maxwell, it was not possible to go from Maxwell’s equations, to Maxwell’s world view of physical reality, which was very mechanical, let alone to his 19

See ch. 2, ‘The Spell of Vortices’, in my Planets and Planetarians: A History of Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems (New York: J. Wiley, 1978). 20 H. Hertz, Electric Waves, tr. D.E. Jones (London: Macmillan, 1893), p. 21.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

134

14:58

Pagina 134

STANLEY L. JAKI

much broader world view, which was quite spiritual in the supernatural sense. Yet, if Maxwell had not been a devoutly believing Christian, but a materialist or a Comtean positivist, it would have been just as impossible to work one’s way from Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory to any materialistic or positivistic world view, or Weltanschauung. Positivism can, of course, be of two very different kinds. One is better known, the other is hardly known. And here I consider positivism only insofar as was it professed by prominent physicists, and only with respect to their science. Kirchhoff was a positivist physicist who claimed that only the positive data of physics constituted valid knowledge. And to his credit, he spoke of nothing else, at least in science. Of course, as a cavalry officer in the Franco-Prussian war, he had to admit that there was valid knowledge even outside science. Certainly in Kirchoff’s collected works one would look in vain for Nature, for philosophy, for a world view. Quite different was the case in the positivism of Oswald and of Mach. They built a general sensationist philosophy on their positivist concept of science. To speak only of Mach, he finally espoused Buddhism as the only philosophy in tune with science.21 There was at that time only one notable physicist who, while strictly positivist in his science, warned against drawing metaphysical and/or countermetaphysical conclusions from science. He was Pierre Duhem, the founder of chemical thermodynamics.22 But for the most part his warnings were almost completely ignored or even misconstrued. His book, La théorie physique, son objet et sa structure, or its English translation, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, is still the most penetrating study on this problem. But he also warned that nothing in physics, however effective, can be used against reasoning in that much wider field which is nowadays called the humanities. These, including philosophy, must stand on their own ground, or they become games in sheer equivocations. In that case they prove totally ineffective in coping with extravagant claims coming from the scientific side, such as the grand conclusion of Heisenberg’s paper of March 1927, in which he first presented what he called the principle of indeterminism. In the conclusion of his paper he stated that because all experiments are subject to the laws of quantum 21 See my The Road of Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp.159-60. 22 For details, see my Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem (Dordrecht; Martinus Nijhoff, 1984).

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 135

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

135

mechanics and therefore to its uncertainty relation, which he had just derived, ‘invalidity of the law of causality is definitively established (die Ungültigkeit des Kausalgesetzes [ist] definitiv festgestellt’). Few are aware of the fact that by then Heisenberg had rejected causality on entirely different grounds. He did so as a spirited supporter of the romantic ideology of the Jugendbewegung.23 Should we therefore try to reconstruct that romanticism from the principle of indeterminacy? Should we see any rhyme and reason in expressions, such as ‘passion-at-a-distance’, of which more and more appear in writings about arcane interactions among fundamental particles? Heisenberg would have been entitled only to conclude that as long as one used Planck’s quantum and a non-commutative algebra, one had to conclude that it was not possible to make fully accurate measurements of physical interactions implying conjugate variables. He could not even prove that fully accurate measurements were absolutely impossible. And he certainly did not prove that the principle of causality did not exist. For even if causality was reduced to mechanistic causality, there was more to it than the idea of fully accurate measurements. And when causality was taken in its ontological sense, in relation to being and not being, then Heisenberg’s conclusion amounted to a plain irresponsibility. One could quote a number of prominent twentieth-century physicists who recognized that science in its most exact form was a mere set of calculations. Such a physicist was Feynman. Another was, and this may surprise many, Niels Bohr, the father, with Heisenberg, of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. All quantum physics, Bohr said, is a set of rules and nothing more.24 In other words, insofar as quantum mechanics is science, it is not a world view, a philosophy of nature. And if quantum mechanics is turned into a world view, the sole support for this lies in the philosophy of the physicist who performs that turnover. The performance is all too often very shabby, in proof of a famous dictum of Einstein: ‘The man of science is a poor philosopher’.25 This does not mean that the scien-

23

As well documented in P. Forman, ‘Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum Theory 1918-1927. Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to Hostile Intellectual Environment’, Historical Studies in Physical Science, 3 (1971), pp. 1-115. 24 N. Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 60. 25 A. Einstein, ‘Physics and Reality’ (1936), in Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 59.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

136

14:58

Pagina 136

STANLEY L. JAKI

tist cannot be a very good philosopher, but if he is, the grounds for this must be philosophical. Einstein was surely a poor philosopher when in the name of his science he denied the existence of free will.26 It did not even dawn on him that unless his denial of free will was done freely, it could not constitute an argument. Nor did he, who spoke so much of human responsibility, realize the measure of his responsibility in that particular case. He denied free will in reply to a student who turned to him, as the greatest authority on earth, for advice on whether to believe in free will or not. Einstein failed to ponder that he constructed freely a four-dimensional cosmological manifold from which he could proceed only to the notion of a physical world in which there was no randomness, but no room either for any free act, including that of writing a letter. So much for the hazards inherent in discussions of the cultural values of science as such values cannot make sense without a world view. A chief of such hazards is to run the risk of saying something equivalent to what Bohr once said, though in great confidence: ‘One day the principle of complementarity will be taught as the only true religion’.27 Anyone sharing that view has to explain how such religion can do what that word means to do as an act of re-ligare, or re-tie. But to what or to whom? Philosophers can say even more startling things than some physicists. They seem to forget that when they say something which is about things and not about mere ideas, they all too often say something which is measurable. Then the scientist barges in, and rightly so. Hegel tried to escape this prospect by claiming that qualities control quantities. In reverse, this also meant – and both the Hegelian right and the Hegelian left kept saying this – that if one piles quantities upon quantities one ends up with qualities. In both cases the results for science were disastrous, to say nothing of other cultural disasters. Contrary to Hegel, quantities remain in their splendid conceptual isolation. To a human mind which aims so desperately at a synthesis, this status of quantities may be a painful fact to consider. It may be a tiresome prospect to play always with two balls at the same time. In a higher world,

26

Letter of April 11, 1946, to O. Juliusburger, in Albert Einstein: The Human Side: New Glimpses from his Archives, ed. H. Dukas and B. Hoffman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 81. 27 See Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, ed. A.P. French and P.J. Kennedy (Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 323.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 137

FROM WORLD VIEWS TO SCIENCE AND BACK

137

such as the world of angels, let alone of God, it will be different. But here below, there is no way of reducing quantities to qualities and qualities to quantities. They form two sides of a coin, which cannot exist without having two sides. They form one reality, but the two sides cannot be integrated into one another if this means the fusing of the two into one. This is just another application of the memorable dictum about the tax coin. Those for whom that dictum smacks of the supernatural world, may do well to ponder something about the natural world, in its totality, which is the universe. The universe is the greatest idea next to the idea of God, so Newman said in his Idea of a University,28 easily the finest book ever written on higher education. I wish he had spoken not of idea but of reality, and in the interest of science. Science surely works with ideas, including the idea of the world, the universe, but the truth of any scientific conclusion must rest with empirical operation on the physically real. Now there is no scientific method that could assure an experimental, or observational proof of the physical universe, because there is no way of getting outside the universe in order to observe it. To have a rational certainty about the reality of the universe as the totality of consistently interacting things, one has to rely on a set of reasonings that are partly physical, partly metaphysical. I tried to work out that reasoning in my Liverpool University Lectures, under the title: Is There a Universe? In sum, one is driven back on the purely natural level too, to the image of a coin with two sides to it. Whereas the two sides are indispensable to one another, neither can be reduced to the other. Herein lies the source of all problems of any effort to go from world views to science and back and ascertain the cultural values of science. On a much lower level it is the problem of a fish caught in a net which consists of ever smaller loops. Once the fish boldly swims into that net at its broad end, the farther it swims toward the narrow end, the less chance it has to retrace its steps to freedom. Let the wide left end of the net represent world views taken in a broad sense. The small right end of the net represents science in its quantitative exactness as well as narrowness. Just as the fish cannot move from the narrow end of the net back to the wide end, so it is with the man who goes from a world view to science and then in vain tries to retrace his track to that world view. There is, however, a big difference. Although he must start with a world view, at the narrow end he can find science, but he cannot find there the 28 J.H. Newman, The Idea of a University (8th ed.; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1888), p. 462.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

138

14:58

Pagina 138

STANLEY L. JAKI

world or the universe. He finds at that narrow end only a set of quantities void of views taken in a broader sense. This is to be kept in mind in any discourse about the cultural values of science. In science there are no values in any cultural and ethical sense. Einstein himself recognized something of this when he said that he had not succeeded in deriving a drop of ethical value from his science.29 There is no way of escaping the difference between quantities and qualities, or science and the humanities. They can come into conflict only when humanists state something which is quantitatively verifiable, and when scientists make statements that can have no quantitative verification. This conflict will fail to give uneasiness only to those who, while on this earth, try to play the angel.

29

In an interview with P. Michelmore, Einstein, Profile of the Man (New York: Dodd. 1962), p. 251.

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 139

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY JAKI

ZICHICHI: You’ve given a complete review of what mankind has thought from the beginning of civilisation up to now. Let me make a few comments. If we project into the real world all human thought before Galilei, the number of ideas that you’ve mentioned have zero projection on the real world. In other words, what was thought to be correct for ten thousand years about the logic of the world was all wrong. For example, you mentioned the atomic ideas of the Greeks. The basic atomic idea of Democritus has been proved by us to be incorrect for the following reason: up to 1975 it was imagined that if an object has a structure it must be broken, and this has been going on since the birth of civilisation up to 1975 when it was proved that the proton you and me are made of, and everything is made of protons, does not break, in spite of the fact that it has an innumerable number of objects (quarks, gluons, real and virtual) inside. Why? Because the forces acting inside the proton – no one had ever imagined this – are non-Abelian forces. This, in the history of human thought, had never been realised, and it’s just an example of the projection of thought into the real world. You cited Maxwell, and Faraday who preceded Maxwell, and Einstein, but you did not cite Lorentz. The greatest conceptual consequence of the Maxwell equation is the complexity of space and time. As I mentioned yesterday, if space is real, time has to be imaginary and vice versa. This has tremendous consequences, which had never been imagined by any human being in the history of thinking. From this we are now at the point of formulating the theoretical structure of the super-world using mathematics. In other words, after Euclid we thought that space had three dimensions, three for space and one for time: total four. We are now convinced, following the development of science and therefore of the real world, that we have 43 dimensions, and this had never been imagined by anyone. So, I would like to convince you that progress in scientific thought started drastically with Galilei not because Galilei was thinking: ‘This is how I imagine the world’, but because he

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

140

14:58

Pagina 140

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY JAKI

imparted to us the lesson that if you want to know the logic of nature you must perform experiments and interpret them in a rigorous mathematical form. This is how in four hundred years we could demonstrate that previous ideas were all wrong. JAKI: First of all about the atomists, I did not talk about them at any length, but I never thought that the ancient atomists had anticipated modern atomic physics, partly because it radically differs from Democritus who claimed that atoms of all sizes must exist, even atoms of infinite size. You find this in Diels’ Pre-Socratic Fragments. The other thing: you yourself said that with regard to space and time, first of all, long before Lorentz, Lobacevski, Gauss and Boyarin spoke of a four-dimensional manifold. You yourself said that whatever you think after that epoch-making discovery, of which man did not have thought before, you have to express it in mathematics, so you are saying exactly what I am saying. Ultimately it boils down to quantities, and that from quantities you do not get anything else, and this was your major dispute yesterday, the essence of your major dispute with Professor De Duve who spoke endlessly about philosophy, about purpose and some somersault in logic, namely chance that doesn’t exhume to exclude inevitability: in Princeton any sophomore would be thrown out from the logic class if he came up with this idea. So, ultimately we have to live with quantities and with everything else, and this is the problem: we have to play with two balls all the time, and man is unwilling to live with this condition, man always wants to synthesise and to reduce everything to one single dimension, and this is the curse of reductionism, whether you call it scientific reductionism or any other kind of reductionism. It is a world view, a reductionist world view. SHEA: Stanley, I want to thank you very much for demonstrating that wild speculation can be very stimulating. I’ll make a very brief comment and ask a precise question. From the vantage point of an historian of science, one has to confess that the ideas that were thrown out were subsequently very influential, even if they were not modern science. The Atomists, for instance, deeply influenced Newton and his thinking, and Dalton also. Copernicus found the idea of the centrality of the sun in Hermes Trismegistus, so we cannot exclude that wild conjectures can be useful. This is my comment. My question is, since you insisted on the centrality of the notion of creation as being very important, could you say a few words about that precise point?

9.Jaki

18-07-2003

14:58

Pagina 141

DISCUSSION ON THE PAPER BY JAKI

141

JAKI: Concerning your first comment, for which you did not ask a question, but I want to say something about it by way of a comment. All those wild ideas could be useful or utterly useless until somehow the core of those ideas was put in quantitative terms. Now, the second thing is this: the idea of creation. I have already lambasted the modern abuse of the word ‘creation’. Too bad I did not bring here some clippings from The New York Times in which a most prominent cosmologist at MIT, Professor Guth and many others, claims that modern quantum cosmology enables him to create entire universes at least in theory, and he also said that for all we know our actual universe may have been created in a basement laboratory in another galaxy. Now, the only illuminating part of this statement is that he referred to a basement laboratory, which are usually very dark places. Now, the idea of creation is absolutely fundamental because it allows us, assures us, that we must do a posteriori research. We cannot approach things on an a priori basis, and apriorism has been throughout the whole history of science the curse of the scientific enterprise. And also, that only in the Christian or Biblical or Catholic theological traditions you find this notion of the Creator who when He creates doesn’t diminish. In all other forms of philosophic and religious traditions the first principle diminishes by producing something else out of itself. You see it in Plotinus and elsewhere, or in Spinoza. And if in this post-Christian or de-Christianising world we Christians or Catholics do not appreciate profoundly the importance of this greatest contribution of ours to world culture, then we can only blame ourselves. SINGER: Thank you, Professor Jaki. I think we have reached our time, and it will remain difficult to know whether concepts precede theory or beliefs precede concepts or vice versa.